


The Lesson

by TigerDragon



Series: Prerogative of the Brave [5]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Always-a-girl!Erik, Big Mutant Family, F/F, F/M, Government Agencies, Homophobic!Black Widow, Implied Torture, Journalism, M/M, Married Couple, Medical Experimentation, Mutant Hate, Mutant Politics, Mutant Rights, Paramilitary, Parents & Children, References to Brainwashing, Rescue Missions, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-13 04:55:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/820232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerDragon/pseuds/TigerDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year is 1969, and Richard Nixon has just been elected President of the United States. Mutant rights are one of the burning issues of the day, the country torn between those who see mutants as human beings and citizens who deserve the rights and respect that come with both and those who believe they are a threat to be contained, controlled or eliminated. The stormclouds are gathering, and Charles and Erika Xavier will be at the heart of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: As usual, we don't own the X-men or any of Marvel's characters. 
> 
> Welcome back, _Prerogative of the Brave_ fans, and for those of you who are new to the series, welcome as well. This will be our fifth entry in the series, and it puts in motion some of the major plot threads for our second novel-length story that will serve as the proper sequel to _A Degree of Hope_ (which we've already started work on, but will probably take most of the summer to finish coming out. Thanks for your patience.) We've gotten a little bit more aggressive with the politics and their implications this time, because the narrative has started to demand it, and we hope you find the results as fascinating as we do. 
> 
> Chronologically, this story takes place before _Where You Hang Your Hat_ and the last scene of _Conjoined_ , but it's thematically the proper prologue to what comes next. We hope you'll all be joining us for that, as well, but for now enjoy _The Lesson_ and feel free to tell us what you think!

**Washington D.C., January 20th, 1969**

“Mister and Missus Charles Xavier, of New York,” the doorman of the Inaugural Ball called out as they passed, and Erika Xavier née Lehnsherr bit down a silent stab of irritation as she remembered to smile, wave and generally act the part of the obliging society wife that her evening gown informed the crowd of rich and powerful men around her she was. _I ought to have pursued a degree,_ _Charles,_ she grumbled in the near-privacy of her own thoughts. _Then it would be Mister and Professor Xavier, which would be far more satisfactory._

Although society events always dampened her mood, Charles’ gentle tug at her elbow and accompanying affectionate smile were at least charming. _I could have someone forge you a diploma,_ he suggested lightly. _You’ve done more than enough research to deserve one._ Pulling a glass of champagne from a passing tray, he took one swallow, pleasure fizzing through their connection, and then handed the rest to Erika. _Couldn’t resist. You can save me from the rest._

 _As ever, husband._ Erika’s lips curved up in a private smile as she accepted the glass like the romantic gesture it was - though not for the reasons the idiots around them would have imagined - and she took a small sip of her own before leaning her head delicately on his shoulder. _Someone would notice the degree and ask the wrong sort of questions. What I’m doing with all that independence and intelligence now, for instance, beyond redecorating your home and micromanaging the first class of your new school. My pride will just have to endure without the sop of sheepskin. Now, who is our first victim that you wish me to charm?_

Charles took a seemingly casual look around the room, his customary mask of polite interest on his fine features. _It will look odd if we don’t have a word with Mister Stans - Commerce would affect our business interests, after all, and we’re supposed to be deeply involved with those - but the prizes of the night are Mister Finch and George Romney. The policies of the Secretary for Health, Education and Welfare directly affects the school and clinics, and our work to break up mutant ghettos will go more smoothly without objections from Housing and Urban Development._ Smiling and greeting other guests as they went, the pair moved further inward. _They’re both farther on our side than the administration is likely to be, and Romney more so._ Another server with a tray passed by, this one with an assortment of hors d'oeuvres, and Charles continued their secret conversation as he chewed and watched the crowd. _Seems that Finch enjoys German classical music. Romney likes cars, if you don’t think it’s too unseemly for a Missus to talk about them._

 _I doubt I can hold a straight face while he tries to educate me about them. I’ll hold Finch for you - introduce me, and I’ll engage him on the school and German composers until you’ve finished with Romney. Association with civil rights for blacks or not, he’s a Mormon, and their doctrinal views on ‘our kind’ are far from favorable at the moment. It will need a deft touch._ Erika leaned up to murmur in his ear as if sharing a confidence, though the words were a simple remark on the quality of the music that neither of them paid any attention to. _If we’re fortunate, you’ll be done before I begin thinking about wrapping a fork around Finch’s neck._

Placing a chaste kiss on her temple, Charles sighed. _My dear, I hope I will be able to stop myself from abusing perfectly innocent flatware for the entire evening._ The introduction proceeded smoothly enough to be entirely automatic, and they waited through the usual pleasantry before bracing themselves for the real task at hand. With a squeeze of her hand, he turned to work on his mark. _Viel Glück, my love._

 _Viel Glück, meine liebe._ Erika smiled the peculiarly fascinated and subtly vapid smile that had required so much practice and observation of American society women to master as she listened to Robert Finch hold forth on the changes he planned to make to the public school curriculum to enable to country to stay ahead of the Soviets. It was a merely tactical matter as to where best to make her move, to step from the background and catch his attention....

“But Mister Secretary - excuse me, of course it’s still Mister Finch, but we all _know_ , don’t we? - surely there must be some means of providing for less fortunate children who still have the capacity to be of use?” She modulated her voice to allow only the slightest trace of her German consonants to intrude and as little as possible of her Yiddish vowels - it grated, to hide the sound of her mother and her father and her father’s fathers, but the more she sounded like a native of New York with a hint of European glamor, the better for the purpose. “Mrs. Xavier - we were introduced a moment ago, of course, but I never remember everyone’s names at these sorts of events.” _Not too bright, not too clever, but charming and well-meaning. Erika Xavier at her public best._

“A very commendable idea, Mrs. Xavier, but the matter is complicated. With our universities in chaos and our young people so easily led astray by rock-and-roll culture....” Finch was off and running now, stumping by reflex, and Erika allowed herself to nod and smile pleasantly while he talked. Politicians were like that - they assumed because they were speaking, one was listening, and as long as one didn’t disabuse them of the notion they could carry on for some time without losing steam. Charles was already deep in conversation with Mister Romney, a few steps to the side of everyone else, and it wouldn’t take long for him to take the soundings he needed to begin the work of persuasion without unnecessary tinkering.

She caught a face out of the corner of her eye and buried a frown. _I know that man. From where could I possibly know that man?_ There was no way to turn and look without breaking the pretense of attending to Finch, but the ache in her left wrist that always acted up when her instincts told her there was trouble afoot would not go away.

 _Charles,_ she called out silently, still keeping that attentive smile on her lips, _there is a man behind me - tall, dark brown hair, stern features, brown eyes. He carries himself like a soldier, even if he wears a tuxedo, and he seems to be accompanying Mister Laird - the man who will shortly be running the Defense Department, if the **Times** is to be believed. I feel that I know him, but I cannot say how, and my instincts are stirred. He is behind me now and coming closer, is he not?_

 _A moment, dear,_  her husband began. Like her, he had appearances to keep up, and she expected he would need a few seconds to look without jeopardizing his current conversation or use extra focus to borrow someone’s eyes.

“Robert,” Melvin Laird interrupted Finch smoothly, “hope you don’t mind, but there’s someone I want you to meet. Could we have a few minutes?”

Finch’s jaw set slightly with irritation, and he straightened his shoulders in the manner of man being addressed with more familiarity than he felt was deserved. “I was just in the middle of speaking to Mrs. Xavier on her very cogent question. Can it possibly wait, Congressman?”

“I’d rather it didn’t.” Laird set his puggish jaw stubbornly and dropped his voice, clearly intending the words for Finch’s ears, but he misjudged the keenness of Erika’s attention and the noise of the room. “Look, the Major here is backed up from on high, know what I mean? The Boss says we need to give this guy a hearing, first thing. You have a problem, you should take it up with him.”

“Xavier. Erika Xavier, isn’t it? I thought I recognized you, but I couldn’t be sure.” The broad-shouldered soldier - yes, she could certainly believe him a Major, despite his relative youth - was looking at Erika very intently now, as if searching for something in her face, and she retreated further into her role as Mrs. Charles Xavier as she offered him a blandly polite smile.

“I don’t believe we’ve met, Mister...?” she pitched her voice in the most off-hand, curious sort of inquiring, as if she were fumbling through her memory searching for him. _Charles..._

“Stryker. William Stryker.” The man smiled extending his hand, and she offered him hers with a reluctance she did not dare show - terribly, sharply conscious of the numbers burned into her arm that were concealed by the length of her long party gloves and formal jacket. “I suppose you could say your husband and I share an interest, Mrs. Xavier.”

A third-hand image flashed in Erika’s mind in the same moment that she felt Charles’ stomach drop. _Don’t you worry, Mister Hogan. You’ve done your country a great service,_ said the man from the stolen memory Charles had been carrying next to his heart since the spring of 1963. The man who had taken mutant prisoners from a New York jail for shipment to an experimental facility upstate without ever showing proper identification or a badge, the sort of man whose very handshake breathed patriotic solidity and who had worked for a program willing to experiment on mutant children obtained by any necessary means.

A man who quite strongly resembled the Major shaking her hand, if one were to add a bit over a decade of age and the customary swagger of a secret policeman in lieu of military stiffness.

“My husband has a lot of interests, Mister Stryker,” Erika confessed in a voice that only the practiced habit of lying cultivated in the camps, at Oxford and  in New York high society assured her was perfectly innocent. “Most of them entirely too intellectual for me to wrap my head around. He once tried to explain horticulture to me, for instance, and my garden took years to recover.”

 _Keep him talking. I’ll see what I can dig up._ The borrowed alarm in the back of her mind was fading swiftly, replaced by an iron resolve that mirrored her own, and for a moment Erika felt a flicker of grief at the memory of how certain Charles had once been that he would never be comfortable using his powers so readily, never be sure of his own good intentions. They had come a long way together, compromising at every step, and it seemed that every day he woke with fresh lines weathered into his lovely face from the burdens she never ceased piling on to him. Sometimes, though she would never have told him so, she missed the callow and laughing boy who had stolen her heart with his simple, decent kindness.

Even if it had only been six years, Oxford sometimes seemed a lifetime ago.

Stryker’s polite chuckle at her joke had subsided, and she could feel his attention beginning to wander. That wouldn’t do - best to take a chance. “Since you’re obviously familiar with my husband and his work, Mister Stryker, perhaps you would like to join us at the celebratory dinner that the Foundation is holding next month? Charles will be breaking ground on a new Community Health and Care Center here in the District, and I’m sure he’d be pleased to have another new face present.”

If it was possible, the man’s jaw set into an even harder line, and the skin around his eyes tightened subtly over his now-brittle smile. “I appreciate your invitation, Mrs. Xavier, but I’m afraid I start a new assignment next week.” He laid a too-familiar hand on her shoulder and gestured. “Would you introduce me to your husband? Now that I know he’s here tonight, I can’t pass up the opportunity.”

 _Flicked you on the raw, didn’t I? You don’t like the Centers, you jack-booted young thug, and unless I’m very much mistaken you don’t like the Foundation._ Erika made a show of turning her head this way and that indecisively, shrinking a little under his hand to feign a moment of intimidated nervousness, and reached out for Charles’s mind again. _Shall I bring him to you, meine liebe, or keep him away?_

His thoughts were foggy, an indication of his preoccupation. _May as well. He’s had some kind of mental block training. Hard to read through._

 _Best to pretend to refresh your glass, then. A hint of intoxication is better than people wondering why you seem distracted._ Erika allowed the moment to stretch out a little longer, then cleared her throat nervously and smiled up placatingly at Major Stryker. “I suppose it really would be rude to refuse, even if he is very busy tonight. All these new people in Washington to get to know - it’s always like that around the changing of an administration. What is it you wanted to speak to my husband about anyway, Mister Stryker? Something to do with one of his humanitarian projects?”

“Nothing of the sort, ma’am,” Stryker deflected casually, his eyes already focused on Charles with a fierce intensity. “Call it scientific curiosity. Your husband, after all, is one of the foremost scientific experts in the world on a subject very near to my heart.”

“Charles?” she murmured, pretending to surprise. “It’s been many years since my husband worked on any sort of laboratory projects, Mister Stryker. Are you sure you’re not mistaking him for someone else?”

“Certain,” he clipped off sternly, his expression turning dismissively contemptuous as he glanced down at her, and Erika buried her tiny spark of cold triumph at seeing that flash of dismissal in his eyes. _Another harmless, doting wife with no idea of what her husband really does. Oh, yes, Mister Stryker, do go on thinking that. Go on thinking it until the day comes to settle our accounts for good._

 _Please wait to murder him until after I can get more information, darling._ Diffuse as it was, the thought was tinged with dry, familiar mirth. Charles was joking, or thought he was. Mostly.

Erika was content to let him go on thinking so. _I shall await your permission with baited breath, meine liebe._ She drew to a stop in front of him, gesturing to the Major and smiling in a nervously mystified way that suggested a woman very deeply out of her depth. “Mister Stryker, my husband Charles Xavier. Darling, this is Mister William Stryker - apparently a great scientific admirer of yours. Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?”

Taking a rather large swallow of champagne, Charles smiled, and looked almost like the young Professor Xavier she’d met in a pub all those years ago. “Genetics, darling,” he answered in a mildly superior tone, one he was always nervous about employing with her, even for their necessary charade. The burned hand, after all, taught its lessons in way that was hard to unlearn. “I have tried to get you to read my dissertation any number of times, you know.”

“Oh, _that,_ ” Erika said in the voice of a woman struck by the sort of revelation that only added to one’s confusion. “Why ever would he be interested in that old thing? The charts alone would put one straight to sleep.”

At the in-character insult, Charles laughed just a touch too loud, enough to indicate his supposed inebriation, and the Major seemed to relax just a shade. Patting Erika on the arm like the good old boy he was supposed to be, he turned to Stryker. “Well, Mister Stryker, what did you want to discuss?”

“Nothing.” Stryker looked him over scornfully, dark eyes full of the kind of sharp-edged contempt that only follows a certain element of disappointed respect, and he jerked the edge of his suit with a hand slightly to straighten it as if it were the uniform he would likely have been far more comfortable in. “I didn’t want to talk to you about anything, _Charles._ I just wanted to see for myself what kind of man could be a traitor to his own species and still show up at respectable parties like a spoiled prince.”

Stiffening, Charles used some of his real hurt to make his performance all the more believable. “Excuse me!” _Got him. Following the thread now._ “There’s no need to be rude, Mister Stryker, and how can one be a traitor if there is no war?”

Only a few weeks ago, Charles had admitted to her that he saw the storm clouds of exactly such a war gathering on the horizon while they ate breakfast on the veranda before the start of morning classes and read through the stack of reports from the Centers in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and Wichita. The last had been particularly disturbing, full of reports of anti-mutant militia activity and violent dissatisfaction in the peripheral mutant groups in contact with Erika’s unofficial protectors who looked after the Center. Charles hated the prospect of war even more than she did, but at least he was beginning to be able to look the possibility fully in the eye.

For the moment, however, the man he’d been before the world had forced that knowledge on him was not too distant a memory to recall to perfection. “Surely a nation that is about to land an astronaut on the moon can get past biological differences.” His voice flattened just a bit on the last word, the evening’s second pang of alarmed surprise spilling over into Erika’s perception. _Dear lord, he was involved in Godric’s Hollow. He worked with the man who designed that helmet. The testing he did, that he intended to do...._

 _Don’t think about it,_ Erika warned him silently. _You are already going pale, and if you look ill it will not appear to be reasonable anger. Witness, record, remember and bury it. Think of it later, Charles._

“There is always a war, Xavier - it’s just a matter of who’s on what side. You get people on one side who can smash a train in half by wiggling their fingers, it might be a damn short one, especially with people like you ready to make them vanish down a hole when they get on the wrong side of the law. You bleeding hearts think just because a few of them look pretty flying through the air over New York or charming sitting in the stands at a Yankees game, they aren’t dangerous?” Stryker’s voice was calm, almost cold - the voice of a surgeon discussing an operating table, not a man expressing his unspoken hatreds. “The man who wrote _Dispossession and Depopulation_ couldn’t possibly be that stupid.”

“I really don’t think you ought to speak to my husband that way,” Erika began - sparing Charles another moment to compose himself and acting as the loyal wife she was supposed to be.

"Shut up. Now." Stryker cut her off with a cold look and a crisply snapped order. “I can’t imagine how you managed to find work in Oxford with your looks or your wit, Mrs. Xavier, but I suppose there’s always room in a scientific laboratory or a Westchester mansion for another curiosity.”

Suddenly Charles was standing between Erika and Stryker, somehow standing toe-to-toe with a man significantly taller than him. “Accuse me of whatever you like, Captain or whatever your rank is, but if you speak like that to my wife again I will....”

“Will?” Stryker inquired dryly, looking down at Charles with a subtly arched eyebrow as those dark eyes evaluated him again with a merciless intelligence. “What exactly will you do, Mister Charles Xavier?”

 _Charles,_ Erika breathed into his mind, her face still turned away in the imitation of shock and concealed tears but her thoughts as sharp and clear as a hard grip on his arm, _he’s pushing you. Testing you. He knows there has to be more to you and he’s using me to make you show your hand. Swallow your damned pride and stick to your cover, husband._

 _I am **inches** from making him think he’s a golden retriever,_ Charles fumed. _Temporarily, of course, so he can wake up and feel proper humiliation._

Outwardly, Charles took a half-step back and pretended to have second thoughts. “Hire enough lawyers to keep you busy for quite some time. Good night!”

“It wouldn’t be for the obvious reason, would it?” Stryker murmured as Charles began to turn away, his voice coldly speculative. “Your little spoon-lifter of a wife can’t possibly be exceptional enough in bed to drive a reasonable man to abandon the interests of his own kind.”

 _That,_ the incensed telepath mused, _is almost funny. He’s certainly pulling out all the stops._

 _Come, now, a few years ago that would have had you punching him in the face._ Erika tucked herself against him, still doing her best to appear to be weeping into her hand as they retreated from the field of conversational battle.

As Charles guided Erika away from the confrontation, he let all his fury show in a glare over his shoulder. At least the situation allowed him that. _Maybe an ape. The headlines alone would be very satisfying._

 _Hush._ Erika leaned into him, hiding her smile behind her glove and against the curve of his shoulder as he fumbled for his handkerchief. _Now pretend to comfort your poor, middle-aged mutant Jewess of a wife with her little floating metal party tricks as a prelude to the payoff for your gross treason to humanity that will doubtless be waiting for you at our hotel._

Placing a kiss on the crown of her head allowed him to hide a smile of his own. _Is this ‘treason’ going to involve ruining my suit? Because that would be very appropriate, don’t you think?_

 _I assure you, your suit will be giving its life valiantly for the cause of mutants everywhere._ Erika’s laughter danced in her head as she wiped at dry eyes with his handkerchief, playing out the last of her part to perfection. _Still, Major Stryker and his new assignment will bear close watching._

 _Of course._ Some real sobriety crept into Charles’ eyes as he smoothed her hair from her face. _We’ve bought some time. His disappointment in us will keep his eyes away from the school a little longer, keeping him looking for someone else behind the Centers for whom we’re hapless dupes._

 _I would resent that popular opinion if it were not quite so useful._ Erika’s own eyes sobered, almost matching the mournfulness of her expression. _The lamps are going out, Charles._

He kissed her again, weariness and affection bleeding through. _I know, Erika. But we aren’t without torches, or torchbearers for that matter._

 _Then they will have to be enough, my darling,_ she sighed into his mouth. _How I wish I had been wrong and you had been right._

 _You may still be, love,_ he murmured as he straightened up and offered her his arm. _If it is to be a war, let us hope for a short and victorious one with a generous peace._

 _Charles,_ she sighed, a small smile on her lips as she looked up at him and caught the fresh light of hope in those clear blue eyes. _My beautiful, foolish dreamer. Take me home so we can enjoy the last lamplight together. There will be time enough for the necessary work tomorrow._


	2. Chapter 2

**Westchester, NY, May 3rd, 1969**

The smell of fresh flowers and blooming trees was rich in the air around the Xavier mansion, the sound of young voices raised in laughter and mischief mingled with the pop of exotic energy projections detonating and the crack of a baseball bat. Erika Xavier sat on the broad veranda overlooking the tennis courts and the garden, sipping her afternoon tea and watching a tall, proud Apache boy and a slim redheaded girl in go-go boots and a red and gold minidress walking through the garden on their way to the reflecting pond. _To feed the ducks,_ they’d doubtless tell her if she asked, and she would nod sagely as though it would never occur to her that there could be any other reason for young people to want to be alone on a day like this.

“ _Ach, mein Gott_ , but I am getting old.” She chuckled softly into her tea, though there were fresh worry lines around her eyes. “Raven, will you stand there all day staring or come and keep a school matron company?”

The lithe, azure figure swayed out of the shadows clinging to the doorway and poured herself into the chair opposite Erika. “I’m happy to keep you company,” she smiled, “but I’m not going to stop staring.” Good as her word, she let her eyes travel slowly up and down her companion’s body, finally settling on her eyes. Cobalt fingers brushed Erika’s face, tracing the faint spider’s web around the older woman’s eyes. “They just make you look more terrifyingly competent, you know. I like them.”

“I would say it comes to all of us, _meine liebe,_ but then I would be lying.” Erika tilted her head enough to brush her lips lightly against those delicately scaled fingertips, her eyes two flawed emeralds glittering with silent emotion. “You only grow more striking, and you change so little. It seems as if it has been only days since I last saw you, but no, it is months - a year, _gibt est nicht?_ You are a hard woman to find.”

Running her thumb over Erika’s bottom lip, the shapeshifter smiled sadly. “I learned from the best.” Shifting closer until she was perched on the very edge of her chair, she kissed Erika softly before letting their foreheads rest together. “I missed you.”

Erika said nothing, but only cupped the younger woman’s face in her hand and kissed each ridged, scaled cheek softly. Finally, gently, she broke her own silence. “Charles misses you. Stay long enough to speak with him.”

A resigned sigh slipped out of blue lips. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Thank you, Raven.” Erika hid a sigh of her own behind a sip of tea, looking into those vivid amber eyes and seeing the bridled anger there. It had been three years since her husband had been able to part ways with his adopted sister on good terms, and the bitterness and frequency of their arguments had been fierce even before that. Sometimes she was vain enough to think that it was her ideas, her choices that had set them at odds, but in cold judgement she knew better. Charles would always want peace first, equality for all, a life of joined community.

The young woman who had stood in front of the burned husk of Avalon and seen the bruises her friends, her people, carried from police nightsticks and heard their grief and rage at their kin stolen away under the cloak of law, who had spent the last decade accumulating arrest warrants for “disturbing the peace” and “resisting arrest” under a dozen different names, had very different priorities.

Red hair brushed scaled shoulders as the activist shook her head. “Not Raven. Mystique.” Squeezing Erika’s hand, she grinned. “One of my lesbian separatist friends started calling me ‘la femme Mystique.’ I thought it was more accurate.”

“Mystique.” Erika rolled the word over her tongue carefully, exploring it, then allowed herself the smallest quirk of a smile. “Merely a personal decision? No connection to the rumors I hear about group re-namings to celebrate rebirth as a member of the Watch?”

Even Mystique’s full belly laughter carried a grace and strength to it. “Ooh, got me. Though I think I would have done it eventually anyway.” Two rows of teeth flashed white in her grin. “Speaking of, I hear Magneto’s been busy lately.”

“‘A hit, a very palpable hit.’” Erika lifted a hand to her heart and affected a stricken expression. “I suppose any warnings to be careful will be met with the scorn I would heap on them in your position, so instead I’ll simply tell you to check your people carefully - if I could obtain that information, so could less well-intentioned individuals.”

“We haven’t tried too hard, actually,” Mystique admitted. “We want people to know we’re out there, looking out for them, and that there’s another way.” She traced her thumb over Erika’s wrist. “But we keep the individual names closely guarded, especially since the disappearances.”

“Disappearances?” Erika straightened sharply, her eyes hardening. “I think you had better tell me everything, _liebling._ ”

Cat-eyes blinked in confusion. “Don’t you know? I thought that’s what you wanted to talk about.” The shapeshifter ran a frustrated hand through her hair. “God, the last thing we need is two big problems.”

“My matter is more investigative than substantive, for the moment. Charles and I met a Pentagon Major by the name of Stryker - his father was involved at Godric’s Hollow, as was he in a more minor capacity. The man is a bigot, a soldier and quite probably a killer, and he has a new and very secret assignment. I thought it would be wise to follow up on.” Erika sketched out the information quickly, as much to allay Mystique’s concerns as for any other reason, then leaned forward to capture that wayward hand with her own. “Your news is more urgent. Disappearances. Begin.”

“Have I mentioned lately how much I hate the Feds? Because, fuck them.” Mystique banged the railing with her fist. “Motherfucking shitheads.”

At Erika’s dryly raised eyebrow, Mystique cleared her throat, cheeks tinged a darker blue. “Right. So, the last year or so, there have been about a dozen disappearances that we know of--different cities, different classes, nothing to leave a trail, except that they were all mutants. At first we thought maybe they were going to ground--there usually wasn’t any sign of a struggle, they were just gone.” She looked out over the garden, mind somewhere far away. “But then I met a post-cognitive. He can tell you what happened somewhere if he can touch objects that were there at the time,” she clarified, possibly unnecessarily, but she was used to being precise with Erika. “And in our perfectly neat room, he saw the latest disappearance getting talked to by a bunch of suits. The guy didn’t want to go, so they drugged him and carted him off.” Her eyes continued their drift, and then she snapped all her attention back to Erika.

“Crap.”

“Yes. Quite.” Erika’s lips peeled back over a hard iron smile. “Men in suits taking our people away, and William Stryker has a new assignment important enough to attend a presidential inaugural ball to speak with a cabinet member about it. I do not believe in coincidence, _liebling._ ”

Mystique shook her head. “No, they’re definitely connected.” Thoughts already racing through her head, she fixed Erika with a serious look. “I can get back in touch with the post-cognitive, pull in some favors. If we can find out where...”  Trailing off, the quiet of a hunter settling onto her, her eyes went distant.

It had not been so long ago that she stood in the mansion’s kitchen, glad that Erika had buried dozens of people in upstate New York.

“If we can find out where,” Erika said in the soft, cold voice of crushed gravel and steel that the world knew as Magneto’s, “then we will put an end to the matter and perhaps secure another six years before some fool accumulates the power and influence to try again.”

“You can do a lot in six years.” The activist nodded back over her shoulder at the pond. “They’ll be all grown up and able to stand up for themselves.” She stood, rolling her shoulders. “There’s the new Centers. And the Watch has started training militias in about a dozen cities. Every time they try, we’ll make it harder.”

Erika signaled her assent with a small smile, standing from the table and reaching down for the younger woman’s hand. “Thank you for sending young Proudstar our way. One or the other of the Greys is quite taken with him, it seems.”

Mystique grinned, wrapping a iridescent arm around Erika’s waist. “You’re not sure which? I can’t imagine Jean wearing that dress, even if she is fourteen.”

“Young women are mysterious creatures,” Erika murmured, her lips curving up at the edges as she looked down into Mystique’s amber eyes again. “One never knows what they will or will not do for a man.”

Kissing the older woman over a grin, the outlaw chuckled. “Well, lucky for me that your stunt involved moving to New York. Oxford is way too far from the action for me.”

“It would make for an inconvenient delay in travel, I must say.” Erika lingered, bare inches from Mystique’s mouth as if she might kiss her again, then lowered her voice to a murmur. “I would not be offending your friend with the charming French affectations if I were to invite you to stay the night?”

Sliding her hands to the small of Erika’s back, Mystique shook her head. “She knows I don’t settle down,” she murmured into the hollow of the scientist’s jaw. “And she has quite the dance card herself.”

“Modern women,” Erika murmured as she bent to kiss Mystique again, “are so practical about these things. One longs for a hint of romance, now and then.”

Mystique laughed as she swept up her companion in strong scaled arms and started for the door. “Well then, my lady,” she began, pleased at the flush of desire beginning to spread across Erika’s cheeks, “you should know that I’ve been thinking about the way you make my blood tingle every night for months.”

“Every night?” Erika inquired, her lip curving upward in reflexive amusement at the artful flattery even as she lifted her fingers to Mystique’s face and stroked the thickened scales along her jaw.

“Well, eighty-five percent,” the younger woman conceded as she leaned her face into Erika’s touch. “Some nights I was so exhausted I just fell straight to sleep.”

“An acceptable reason,” Erika teased as they passed the second-floor landing and turned toward the guest rooms, “so long as you dreamed of me, liebling.”

Nudging open the door to her favorite guest room with a naked hip, Mystique lowered her voice to a sultry purr. “Would you like me to show you what we did in my dreams?”

Erika’s voice hitched, ever so slightly, as if she were a girl of fourteen again and not a woman past forty, settled, married, a schoolteacher and an adopted mother. “I would like that very much, liebling,” she breathed, “if you will but shut the door. We are not quite so far at the forefront of the sexual revolution here as in your separatist haunts yes?”

Holding Erika in her golden-eyed stare and laughing lower in her throat than any human woman could have hoped to, Mystique reached out behind her and toed the door shut.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So lesbian separatism was a thing. We're not making it up. People actually felt this way (for reasons that aren't really hard to understand if you know the period, but seem hard to imagine now). Needless to say, the parallels with our fictional mutant separatism seemed obvious enough that Mystique fit neatly in both camps. She probably knows people in the Black Separatist movement, too, but we figured that would be less likely to produce the new name. :)
> 
> Speaking of which, if you don't get the joke, go read Betty Friedan! It'll improve your mind. 
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separatist_feminism


	3. Chapter 3

**Annex B, Harry S. Truman Research and Development Center, Langley, VA, January 21st, 1970**

The office on the third floor of the nondescript government building tucked into the thick Virginia forest was nothing special - standard issue government desk, standard issue Pentagon chairs, standard issue government shelves. Cheap, efficient, built by the lowest bidder. Even the phone on the desk was unremarkable, except for the electronics inside it. The only thing that would have raised eyebrows in someone mistaking it for the office of some mid-level paperpusher without any real pull was the exacting neatness of the files tucked into the inbox and the arrangement of the memos on the desk into exactingly precise rows.

Major William Stryker was a very precise man. It was not one of his few endearing traits.

For long minutes at a time, only the smoke wafting upwards from his cigarette moved as he read the file currently open on his desk. Very occasionally he took a drag, the pea-soup leather of the chair creaking softly, before returning his left hand to rest on the desk beside the ash tray. When Stryker had his way, the only sounds in his office were his breathing, the ticking of the standard-issue wall clock, the creaking of the chair, and the occasional soft rustle of pages being turned.

His quiet work was interrupted by the phone ringing. Without moving, he finished reading the page in front of him and let the file fall closed.

“Yes?”

“Good afternoon, Major,” his secretary greeted smoothly. “Your four o’clock is here.”

“Thank you, Margaret. Show her in,” he said briskly, then hung the receiver in its cradle without wasting time on any other words.

Placing the closed file neatly on a stack of other documents he had yet to read, the Major glanced at the clock. Ten till four. His mouth tightened upwards at the corners as he adjusted his tie. Sometimes the mousetrapped agents showed their defiance in small ways, tiny insubordinations like making you wait a few minutes. Frigid bitch though she was, he admired Agent Romanoff’s professionalism. If she was going to show her displeasure with her situation and decided she could live with the consequences of crossing him, he would probably find rat poison in his food. That was more her style.

He preferred it that way. It made for smoother operations.

Natalia Alianovna Romanova was the sort of woman men had been dying for since there was such a thing as men and women, and very conscious of her physical sensuality. It was therefore (probably) a mark of respect that she chose to attend her appointments with him in a professional skirt suit and with her hair tucked back into a functional ponytail rather than anything more alluring. The other possibility, which he was not yet prepared to dismiss, was that she’d somehow deduced that unadorned efficiency was far more attractive to him than any of the cover identities he could access the files of with a quick call to his secretary.

She paused at the chair in front of his desk, waiting formally on her feet. Wordlessly, Stryker took one last drag from his cigarette, then ground it deliberately into the ashtray.

“Agent Romanoff. Shall we go for a walk?”

It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t for a moment pretend it was. He liked that about her, too.

They passed the walk to the elevator in efficient silence, her gracefully light footsteps falling in neatly beside his own ingrained march, and she stood very still and straight while the floor passed without leaning on the rails or otherwise showing signs of false comfort. He returned the favor, organizing his thoughts silently, and when the elevator deposited them on Experimental Floor 1 and they were safely away from prying ears he had settled his mind.

“Your reports from the last year have been thorough, factual, and of almost no use whatsoever. I am certain you wouldn’t be stupid or unprofessional enough to sabotage your own mission, and I doubt that you would have lacked the competence to obtain more than what is in your reports, so on reflection I find myself convinced that your natural conservatism - amplified by the rigidity of the training you received in Soviet service - is holding you back from attaching analysis and speculation to your reports. With that in mind, an informal and off the record briefing seemed called for. Is that understood?”

She stole a glance at him, startled, but when he said nothing further and the silence began to stretch out between them, she took her cue to speak well enough. “ _Da,_ Major. I understand.”

The corridor and door to Cluster III was as bland and uninformative as the rest of the facility. Major Stryker pulled out a key with cylindrical red fob, unlocked the door, and ushered Romanoff inside.

“This unit is R&D for specialized field operatives,” he began, closing and locking the door behind them. “You might have a future as one of them. But for now,” he nodded around at the small room full of hazmat suits and lockers, “you brief me.”

Romanoff’s skin might have gone a fraction paler - a reminder of her conditioning and training with the KGB perhaps? - but she held on to her nerve. Promising.  “The Xavier Foundation as a whole is a deceptively open book. I was able to infiltrate and exfiltrate several times through their volunteer and clerical staffs, despite my obvious lack of mutation, and was made to feel extremely welcome in the process. Doubtless part of their propaganda efforts. They conduct charity and civil rights programs everywhere they maintain a presence, including minority groups beyond mutants, but within the organization there is very little question that mutant rights are the chief priority. It is an accepted statement of belief that mutants can, must and should be freely accepted as ‘normal’ members of society.”

Zipping up the protective coveralls, the Major grunted in annoyance. “We know this.”

“Da, Major, but I believe you miss the implication. The civil rights efforts, the medical assistance, the publicity work - all open to the public. All participatory at every level. Even the senior leadership is carefully balanced, mutant and non-mutant.” Natalia shimmied into her own coveralls without taking her eyes from him. “It is as we would say in the Motherland a hero project - meant to be seen. To be participated in. To draw the public eye.”

He paused, shifting his grip on the heavy protective gloves, arching an eyebrow with subtle impatience.

“There are gaps in the story. Not large enough even to be visible to most within the organization, but present. Local organized crime which mysteriously leaves the Xavier Centers alone, even in the least pleasant neighborhoods. A distinct decrease in anti-mutant violence in those areas where a Center exists and a corresponding increase in militancy and injury rates among anti-mutant militias in the area. Fear among potential counter-demonstrators which aligns with major community efforts by the Centers.”

“They’re coordinating.” He couldn’t quite hide the hint of ugly satisfaction in his voice.

“Yes. But it is well-hidden. At best, the senior personnel at each Center are connected to the local mutant militia on what would appear on investigation to be a personal, casual level. Very deniable. Very cellular.”

Leaving the headgear tucked under his arm, Stryker led the way deeper into the unit. It was another nearly featureless corridor lined with more locked doors.

“So the spoiled philanthropist really is a facade.” He stopped before a door--more of a vault, really--with a six-inch thick steel doorjamb. “Damn hippie is a better liar than I thought.”

This time the Major took out a black-fobbed key, this one with a stark white ‘X’ etched into the plastic. He inserted this into the keyhole next to the door, opening a steel-housed number keypad. Gesturing at the spy to turn around, he typed in a long code. The door let out a hydraulic hiss as it opened.

The door itself was just as thick as its housing, and though the room didn’t look it, all walls and the floor and ceiling were made of thick, steel plates.

Romanoff’s tiny, fleeting glances around the room betrayed her apprehension. Now _there_ was a woman who knew a strong prison when she was in one.

“There is a small possibility that he is merely the figurehead whose strings are being pulled. There is no indication that he is a mutant, after all, and it seems improbable that a human would come to such a conclusion on their own. No matter how much the organization idolizes him, it would not be impossible to use him.” She continued her briefing with a sort of grim determination, as if the act of staying on mission was a promise to herself that she would walk out of this place alive.

“Improbable, but not impossible.” He was certain, now, that it was Xavier at the heart of the threat if not at the head of it. Still, all possibilities needed to be verified. “The wife?”

“According to MI-5 and my own investigations, exactly what she appears to be - a laboratory assistant known around campus as a prudish snapping turtle, swept off her feet by a young American with money. Minor telekinetic abilities. No history of anti-government protest, no political views worthy of mention. A penchant for travel, but no more than any foreign wife with money. She seems to enjoy playing house - they’ve adopted several children, have none of their own.” She cleared her throat. “There is one possibility that seemed too unlikely to put into my report, but that I did consider.”

He paused at the door near the operating room at the center of the Cluster, his fingertips resting on another security keypad. “But?”

Romanoff mustered a narrow little smile in spite of her obvious nervousness. “Twice while I was in New York, I was gently hustled away from mutants who had come in for medical treatment. Not local activists or militia. Outsiders who seemed to be known. I got a brief look at one of them, then went through the FBI’s files looking for him. He has a suspected affiliation with a radical group call the Watch, whose activities appear to share some coordination with those of a certain anonymous individual in whom you’ve previously expressed an interest. I could never find any further evidence to substantiate the connection, but the possibility it suggested was... unsettling.“

The stern set of the Major’s features tightened further into a grim, foreboding mask. “It’s time we stepped up our operations, if the Xaviers are involved with Magneto.” Pushing the door open into a small observation room, he gestured down at the brightly-lit scene below.

Natalia went pale and still.

The small, wiry Asian woman on the operating table was open in a dozen places, the wounds held open by metal clamps to prevent them from sealing closed while the surgeons worked. Here and there, bones glittered with a dull gray sheen where the blood had been suctioned away from them and not yet replaced. The woman’s eyes were open, unseeing, gray flecked with glittering metal.

The primary surgical team was working on the hands now, adjusting the skin and muscle to accommodate the considerable modifications to the underlying bone structure. That was promising - it meant they had finished with the torso and the neurological corrections ahead of schedule. Commendations would be in order.

William Stryker smiled. “They have their operatives, Agent Romanoff, and we have ours.”

“Major,” the Russian murmured, an undertone of anger finally becoming audible, “if you are planning to do that to me, I will kill as many of you as I can before someone shoots me in the head.”

Stryker turned a bemused eyebrow to his subordinate. “We don’t waste assets here, Romanoff. That operation would kill you, or anyone else with a human immune system, healing rate or pain threshold. Besides, it would be inhumane.”

For a split second, the woman’s jaw hung open in an ‘o’ of disbelief, and then she wrestled her face back to a respectful blankness with what was obvious a considerable effort. “Sir?”

“There are certain things human beings simply don’t do to each other, Agent Romanoff.” The Major’s smile was as serene as a glacier’s surface. “It would not be in keeping with the honor of the country or the uniform. You understand, I trust?”

“ _Da,_ Major.” Romanoff’s eyes were fixed over his shoulder, but she remembered to nod. Good. Proper respect was important. “I understand.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Westchester, NY, February 12th, 1970**

“No.”

Crossing her lithe arms across her chest, Heather Tucker narrowed her eyes into the same argumentative expression she’d worn for every fight since she was eight. “Why is it okay for you to go and not us?” Tossing her braids angrily, she stared down her teacher and mentor. “We can keep up and we sure as hell aren’t ignorant of what goes on out there.”

From behind her desk, Erika considered her two former students - her favorites, if she was honest with herself - and resisted the urge to resort to a maternal _because I said so, and that is final._ First, because it would have undermined years of teaching the young people in front of her to know their own minds and betrayed her own convictions about the right of mutants to chose the course of their own lives, and more importantly because it would have been totally ineffective.

“I suppose that there is very little point is asking _how_ you two came into possession of the information in question?” It was a play for time, of course, but she was also curious. Operational security was something she took very seriously indeed, and to have it penetrated by a boy of nineteen and a girl of eighteen - no matter how intelligent and close to home - left her feeling uncomfortably exposed.

Heather shifted her weight--a much more subtle tick than the fidgety, guilt-induced sidestepping had been when Erika had first rescued her--and her dusky cheeks darkened a bit further.

“We got suspicious. All those times you were gone, when Mister Xavier distracted us from questions he would never answer and even I could tell he was worried.”  She shrugged uncomfortably. “I froze you and got your key so I could make a copy. The number was harder, but...”

Scott spoke up softly. “The date Auschwitz was liberated and the time of you and Mister Xavier’s wedding, plus a randomized digit. It isn’t designed to lock out if you guess wrong enough times.”

“Well.” Erika’s mouth twitched slightly, impressed in spite of herself. “Obviously we’re going to have to do better. You two are in charge of figuring that out.”

A quiet laugh bubbled out of Heather. “Aced the interview we didn’t know we were having, huh?”

“A test I did not know I was giving you, perhaps.” Erika leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment, resting her fingertips on the desk, trying to find some sense of balance within herself. Of all the people to whom she had ever expected to need to explain her double life, the children had been the farthest from her mind - mistake, now that she recognized it, because she hadn’t been ready for them to grow up. Not yet. And the last thing she would have expected was that they demand to be included. “My .... work is dangerous. Charles doesn’t entirely approve. There are a great many risks involved - to your futures, as well as to your health and well-being.”

“So we, what, sit around nice and safe while people are getting kidnapped and dead out there?” The time-warper’s voice hadn’t risen, but it had taken on a subtle growl. “If we don’t fight back, it’s just a matter of time before they get to us anyway, isn’t it?”

Erika winced slightly, hearing her own voice in those words and feeling a sting of guilt at the reflexive need to protect her own children from the harsh truths she had spent so long trying to convince Charles of. _Has he really changed me so much,_ her conscience prickled, _or is it merely selfishness that I want to keep them off the streets as long as I can?_

“You want to be a scientist, perhaps a police officer. Scott wants to be a teacher. This could destroy all of that, even if you never take a scratch.” She tried to meet Heather’s eyes again, found herself unable to hold them, and turned away. “You’re very quiet, Scott.”

Tall and lanky, still filling out the breadth of his shoulders, Scott Summers often looked younger than his nineteen years. Especially when he caught himself playing with his glasses and had to remind himself to stop. When he looked her in the eyes through the ruby quartz lenses, though, there was no mistaking the set of his jaw or the quiet certainty in his voice for anything but the adult resolution it was. “Ask us what you really want to ask us, Miss Lehnsherr.”

She let out all her breath, drew it in again, then nodded. “Why do you want to do this?”

Scott didn’t hesitate. “Because it’s the right thing to do. Because someone who isn’t the Watch needs to do it, or they’ll get out of hand. Because we can do it.”

“Once you begin this, it will never let you go. Do you understand?”

Heather’s face set into an expression of strength and desolation that broke Erika’s heart with its familiarity. “We still have nightmares about that place. Those men. What they did to us.” She shrugged again.

Erika was silent what felt like a long time, then stood up slowly and finally met the girl’s eyes again. “So do I. We start training tomorrow.”

The tension in Heather’s shoulders slackened, and her slow exhale was an unmistakable sigh of relief. “Thank you. We’ve been going crazy not doing anything.”

“She’s serious about the crazy,” Scott added, lips quirking ruefully. “I think she was sneaking out to freeze-read the news every ten minutes last time we were eating dinner.”

Erika shook her head, smiling faintly. “It will take some time to build equipment suitable for you to use it in the field. Until then, you have a great deal of work ahead of you. Perhaps by the end of your training, not doing anything will seem preferable.”

The two young mutants shared a somewhat exasperated look, then turned back to their mentor.

Heather pulled a small notebook out of her pocket. “So, Miz Lehnsherr, I saw Uncle Hank’s been working on something to amp up mutant powers...”  

 _My children. My dear, dear children._ Erika, in spite of everything, began to laugh. “And your father calls _me_ relentless. Perhaps it is I who am in trouble now, yes?”

Considering that they shared no genetic ancestors more recent than Genghis Khan, there was something exceedingly similar about Scott and Heather’s satisfied grins.


	5. Chapter 5

**Philadelphia, PA, April 5th, 1970**

Slightly crumbling brownstone apartments, rows of storefronts with hand-lettered signs crowding the windows, and the occasional filling station comprised most of Northern Liberties. It was an old neighborhood, long since neglected by all but its residents - most of them immigrants, first and second generation strivers from lands now locked behind the Iron Curtain, men and women accustomed to the rough and unseemly hand of history bearing down on their lives. It was a place with cracked sidewalks and clean stoops, and when Northern Liberties had become - almost overnight, it sometimes seemed - the home of the bulk of the city’s mutant population that couldn’t seamlessly hide itself away in society, most of Philadelphia hadn’t even noticed. Some of the natives complained, but not many. There was still enough of the Slavic peasant’s regard in the community for the unknown, the spirits and ghosts and demons of the old world, that these new _rusalka_ , _lesovyk_ and _domovoi_ were to be treated with cautious optimism. To anger them would be foolish, but who knew what they might offer in exchange for hospitality? “Unnatural,” the favored curse of the Anglo-American confronted with a mutant, was scarcely breathed.

Quietly, first in ones and twos and then in a small flood, the mutants of Philadelphia accepted.

There were ‘mutant’ bars in Philadelphia - three of them, in fact, all downtown- that catered to the tourist, the slumming ‘normal’ wanting to get a glimpse of the exotic. If you were looking for a quick lay, a little fast cash or to make a spectacle of yourself, any of them would set you up. The Bell wasn’t like that. Tucked up behind a row of shops selling everything from _paczki_ and _zupa mleczna_ to _salo_ and _kalach_ , it was an old-fashioned wood and plaster bar with a bouncer who could crack steel in his palms and two rules: mutants only, and absolute discretion.

That, and that Rita Wayword would personally rearrange anyone who made a mess they didn’t clean up.

“Boilermaker, boilermaker, straight bourbon, vodka, Old Fashioned.” The lean, compact woman behind the bar didn’t smile often, but she never forgot an order and she was the fastest drink mixer anybody had ever seen. Well, except for Tammy Barnes down in Baltimore, but everyone at the Bell would have sworn up and down that being able to run down a speeding cop car on your own two feet made it an unfair contest. Of course, down in Baltimore they said the same thing about having six arms, but everyone knew that was nonsense. Everyone in Philly, anyway. “Anybody else got a drink getting old?”

The old man sitting at the corner of the bar raised his shot glass in response. “I know you kids think otherwise,” he grumped at her in a faint Polish accent, “But the vodka back home gets you drunk faster.”

“If the vodka doesn’t go to work as fast, Grandpa, it’s only because you’ve had your liver in training for fifty fucking years.” Rita reached up and pulled down a bottle one-handed, flipping the top off with her thumb and refilling his glass. “Thing’s probably made out of old shoe leather by now.”

“Bah,” he retorted with a wave of his spotty hand and a badly-suppressed smile, “My grandfather, he got drunk faster, and he was drinking before he could read.”

“Your grandaddy could read?” Rita affected surprise. “When was that, on his deathbed?”

With a roar of laughter, the white-haired man downed the shot in one go, tears in his eyes. “Ah, Hayworth, you are a fine woman. I am almost surprised you are not married.”

“No shit.” Rita rolled her eyes at the nickname - any resemblance she had to Rita Hayworth was thoroughly in the head of her patrons, as far as she was concerned - and poured someone a beer without looking. “You’d think I could find a man half as good with two hands as I am with any of mine, but no fucking luck. Do they make those better in the old country, too?”

“In Japan, you would find such a man, but he would beat you with a stick for your mouth. Also because you cannot warm sake without ruining it.” If Marlon Brando had still been a young man, he might have envied the cool with which Shiro Yoshida spoke up from the other side of the bar, a beer in one hand and the other in the pocket of a boy even younger than he was. The leather jacket that completed the look had to be worth enough to put a strain on anyone in this neighborhood’s pocket, but he wore it with the casual contempt of the congenitally careless. It looked obnoxiously good on him and he knew it.

“He could try,” Rita snorted, throwing a look over her shoulder. “Elvis called - he wants his hair back.”

A girl wearing sunglasses, jeans and a button-up khaki shirt walked through the door leading to the stairs before the laughter could die down. “I know that laugh. We’re playing the dozens? Who’s winning?”

“Hayworth’s _always_ winning,” a wag in the back with ice crystals instead of hair called out. “Mouth’s even faster than her hands!”

Sliding onto a stool next to the old man, the girl smiled brightly at him and the bartender, exposing an overabundance of pointed, serrated teeth. “Hi, Grampa. You drunk yet?”

“Not fast enough for him, apparently.” Rita reached down and pulled out a cocktail glass, mixing a margarita with two hands while she wiped the bar and spread two more in the air in an ostentatious shrug. “I think his real mutant power is holding his damn liquor.”

The old man gave a harrumph, muttering. “You want that I evaporate the best bourbon? See how smart you are then.”

“Hey!” Tommy Falon called from the back of the room in a voice like a thunderstorm, “I like that bourbon!”

“Inside voice, Tom,” someone else called, “or you’ll break all the damn glasses again and Hayworth will be _pissed_.”

Everyone laughed, and as she was giggling the toothy girl noticed the margarita in process. “Ooh, Rita, can you make it really limey like you did last time?” she asked almost wistfully. “With extra tequila? My boss was a real dick today.”

“No problem.” Rita squeezed in another lime, added some more salt, threw in another shot of tequila and grinned. “But if you want me to conjure up that boy you were talking to, Margie, you’re out of luck. He hasn’t been in all week.”

Pulling the hair tie out of her long, straight brown hair, Margerie Jones sighed. “Damn.” Dragging the salted glass closer, she played with the lime twist in both hands. “Not a great time for a girl to be a zoo all by herself, I guess.”

“ _Oojisan’_ s grandsons will be old enough soon. I am sure they will know how to treat you properly.” Shiro let go of the boy with a quick kiss on the cheek, then threw back the rest of his beer and stood up. “Perhaps you should wear a skirt to meet them.”

Margie took an unladylike gulp of her drink. “Because my _pants_ are the thing that scares them away.” Laying her sunglasses aside, she fixed the Japanese man with a dry look in her hawk’s eyes. “And the ones who go for my...special features are all pigs anyway.” She sighed, turning a soulful look back at Rita. “Please tell me that there are decent men out there and they aren’t all dogs.”

“There are decent men out there and they aren’t all dogs,” Rita told her, the embodiment of sympathy. “If you meet any, let me know, okay?”

“Damn,” the girl repeated, putting away more of the margarita before staring into the glass like it might tell her something.

It didn’t.

The door buzzer went off behind the bar, and Rita perked up as she reached for a fresh set of beer glasses. “Must be quitting time all over. Think Rock and Chuck are going to come in tonight? They’re always good for a thick tab.”

Shiro shook his head and rapped the bar impatiently. “All the more reason to pay my bill and go, yes? They are the worst sort of _amerikajin_.”

“Keep your pants on. That pretty boy isn’t going anywhere without you.” Rita threw him a wry, cool look and reached for her pad. “Besides, you still owe me from last week.”

The door opened yet again, and a sleekly-muscled Puerto Rican with a wickedly amused look on his face led three other people up to the bar. “Rita, _mi querida, ¿qué tal?_ ”

The top buttons on his shirt were undone, teasing the viewer and showing off a little of his chest. Margie and Shiro both stared. Rita just sighed, shaking her head in mock-exasperation. “Alejandro, you are nothing but trouble and I ought to throw you out of my bar right this minute. But you tip pretty good, so I guess I won’t. What’ll you and your friends have?”

“We’re not old enough to...” The black girl in wide-legged trousers, a double-breasted denim jacket and a ‘fro shut up at a sideways glance from the older woman accompanying her, whose broad hat, long coat and half-veil gave her the look of a particularly severe matron, and settled down at the bar with a careful primness that didn’t go with the street look of her clothes at all. The boy who sat next to her was a little less obviously out of place, clean-cut looks and red sunglasses aside - he moved like a kid who’d been in a bar more than once, and the old leather bomber jacket and jeans he was wearing looked at home on him.

“You have beer - not the American _gesöff_ , but English or German?” The thick Bavarian accent of the woman’s voice made her even more obviously foreign than the conservative blouse, skirt and veil, but there were more than a few German families in the neighborhood and it wasn’t the sort of thing to draw eyes. Strange company, but not that strange - not around here.

Rita reached for the bottles on the wall. “No English. German. Three?”

“ _Ja, danke._ ” The woman nodded, gesturing to herself and the two teenagers, then threw a glance at Alejandro and smiled - just a fractional movement of the lips, but enough for Rita to pick up on. _Friends. Intimate. I wonder who they are?_

At the other end of the bar, Margie’s eyes had torn themselves away from the slick Latino and quite happily gotten stuck on the new boy. She started to bite her lower lip, stopped at the familiar prick of her teeth and threw back the rest of her drink to knock the thought of how _that_ was going to go over out of her head. Still, red glasses said not totally square, right?

Shit. Now he was looking back at her. Smiling.

“Hi!” she chirped, a little too loudly and with the air of someone determined to keep going no matter what fell off the car. “I’m Margie.”

“Scott.” He picked up the beer Rita slid to him along the bar without needing to look at it, twisted off the top with a little bit of effort, then took a long swallow and smiled. Again. “You have... um... nice eyes.”

A light flush warmed Margie’s cheeks, and her already wide pupils opened up a little further in the brown irises that filled all but the very corners of her eyes. “Thanks.” She smiled at him for another moment without saying anything. “Are your eyes special? I’ve never seen glasses like that.”

“Light-sensitive,” he said, in the voice of someone defaulting to a rehearsed line and then catching themselves at it but not knowing how to back out. “Really light-sensitive. I kinda can’t take them off.”

“Oh.” She hesitated, obviously looking for a non-ocular topic. “Where are you from?”

“New York. Well, all kinds of places, but mainly New York.” His smile relaxed noticeably at the subject change. “I’m guessing you’re not from around here. Georgia?”

“West Florida. My momma was from Savannah.” Now it was Margie’s turn to sound uncomfortable and avoidant. This could be going better.

Rita hid a smile behind one of her hands and tried not to look at the kids tripping over themselves too obviously. The black girl just rolled her eyes, and Alejandro was busy having a conversation with Shiro that seemed to consist entirely of manly glances and flirtatious looks. The rest of the bar, having decided that the amusement value of the newcomers was about expended, seemed to have gone back to their drinking.

Rita sobered up and dropped her hand. “So, Alejandro,” she said softly enough to make sure the words wouldn’t carry, “you in town for business or pleasure?”

With a last, smouldering look up and down Shiro, the newcomer turned to face the bartender. Body language still relaxed and careless, his voice turned low and careful. “I’m taking Doña Acero and the kids,” he nodded in their direction, “to see the sights. Taste the local color. You know how it is - kids want to see everything.”

“'Everything' takes in a lot of ground, Alejandro,” Rita murmured, a jolt of adrenaline visibly stiffening her spine.

“They’re very mature for their age,” he assured her, sipping his drink and measuring her gaze over the glass, “and enthusiastic. Good students.”

She held his eyes for a minute, automatically wiping down the bar while she did it, then nodded slowly and glanced at ‘Acero’ for a lingering moment. “And your lady friend? Solid?”

A long, slow grin spread over the Puerto Rican’s face. “Like Lady Liberty.”

“Back room. Twenty minutes.” Rita stepped away as though she were just taking another drink order, picking out a couple of coasters and setting them in front of Shiro and Margie, then another to slide under the fresh beer she put in front of the old man. He took a swallow, looked down at the coaster, looked back up at her and grinned.

“Shut up,” she told him.

He didn’t. “The vodka is still shit, but you pour a good beer, Haywood.”

“I pour the _best_ beer, you cheap old fuck.” Rita bit off the words, as much to bleed off her own tension as to keep up the banter, and he just smiled. Damn the man, anyway.

Another round for the bar, then a quick dip back to the telephone. She let it ring twice, heard the click of a pick-up, thanked the saints she didn’t believe in anymore. “Carlos, I need you to cover for me. At least an hour, maybe more. Fifteen minutes, no questions. Can you do it?”

“ _Sí, ¿cómo no? Pero...¿te pasa algo?_ ”

“I’m good. Something just came up. Should be a heavy night - lots of tips - but you can handle it. Stay cool.” Rita hung up the phone, looked at it for a minute, then murmured under her breath. “Cool. Yeah.”

Tommy Falon’s voice rattled the walls again. “Is there a bartender in the house?”

Rita blew out her breath, straightened up and grinned at herself in the mirror over the phone. “Keep your fucking panties on!” she shouted back. “And if you break my fucking shot glasses, you’re never gonna _stop_ paying for it.”

Then she went back to work, because she still had a bar to run for fifteen more minutes.


	6. Chapter 6

**Philadelphia, PA, April 5th, 1970**

“Nice secret hideout, Rita,” Alejandro threw over his shoulder as he stepped into the decommissioned walk-in freezer the bartender had unlocked. “Did they hire you as the next Bond villain since the last time I was in town?”

“Shut up. It’s soundproof, it’s securable, and Gregor doesn’t ask uncomfortable questions.” Rita pulled over a chair, which scraped on the concrete, and sat down behind the cheap wooden folding table that sat in the middle of the room. “We’ve got a radio scanner up on the roof wired down into that speaker over there, we’ve got storage space for weapons and emergency supplies, and we’ve got direct access from the bar without having to sneak down a fire escape. You want to pay for something better?”

To be fair, if only in the privacy of her own mind, Rita also found having her secret meetings in a steel and concrete box a little melodramatic, but she’d be damned if she was going to admit that to her guest. “Shiro’s going to be disappointed, you know,” she drawled by way of revenge. “When he finds out.”

Still grinning, Alejandro shimmered until a flame-haired, blue, and extremely naked woman stood in his place, stretching with a small sigh of relief. “What, is shape-shifted dick not real enough for him?”

“I ought to wash your mouth,” a soft voice said from the door, and Rita looked up in surprise to see the veiled woman in the doorway. In the harsh fluorescents of the freezer she looked paler, the subtle hints of gray at her temples visible behind the veil and her hat, the conservative gray skirt-suit and long coat turned the color of dulled metal, the polish on her boots and gloves sharper. Maybe it was all of those things, or maybe it was the way she stood now - tall, proud, absolutely certain of herself. Whatever it was, it filled the room thick enough that you couldn’t help but breathe it. “Where did you learn to speak like that?”

“Doña Acero.” In two swaying steps, Mystique reached the older woman, squeezing her hand, and gave an apologetic nod. “I meant no offense.”

“Then do not be offensive.” Acero held the stern stare a moment or two longer, then stepped fully into the freezer and looked it over with the cool eye of a professional, or perhaps a very experience amateur. “Secure. Well-supplied. Good access to escape routes. I am not easily impressed, Miss Wayword, but this is well done.”

“Spiral.” The bartender straightened and tossed her hair out of her face with one hand, folding four of her arms across her chest and looking Acero hard in the eyes through the veil. “My name’s Spiral.”

“I see.” The older woman didn’t look away, didn’t hesitate. “You’ve come a long way from tending bar at Avalon, Spiral. Are your people as committed as you are?”

A sharp, cold spike of recognition pinned Spiral in her seat, and one of her hands tightened reflexively against the table hard enough to mold the wood under her grip. “You were there with her at Avalon, the night before we buried our dead. You got the coroners to turn them loose, got the police to back off on the people they arrested after the riot. You’re...”

The woman stopped her with the lift of a finger. “Not yet. Names have power. I trust you will allow me to keep my secrets, as I will keep yours.”

Spiral nodded slowly, still dizzy with understanding. “How many people ....?”

The air next to ‘Acero’ had been empty for their brief exchange, but then it wasn’t. The young black woman seemed to pop into existence inside the freezer, jarring Rita’s already tight nerves.

“Very few,” the girl answered. “Me, Cyclops, a couple of family members, and now, you.”

‘Acero’ tilted her head, as if in question, and the black girl nodded once, sharply - some private exchange of understanding more efficient than words. Then the door opened again, almost silent on its hinges, and Shiro entered with Grandpa on his heels. Scott and Margie were right behind them, still clinging to their conversation in spite of the awkwardness, and the older woman glanced at Spiral again with a subtly raised hand. “Everyone?”

Spiral nodded affirmation, once, and straightened in her seat reflexively. There was an electric tension in the room now, and only the two whispering teenagers seemed immune to it. ‘Acero’ hand flicked, and the door slid closed with a soft clang and then a longer rattle as the chain and its locks wrapped itself around the door handles and pulled taut. Scott went silent, squeezed Margie’s shoulder, found a seat. The black girl did the same. Shiro offered Mystique a small bow, his eyes flicking the room as if searching for Alejandro, then stood against the cool metal of the wall with his arms crossed over his chest.

Mystique claimed the weapons rack by unwinding herself in a sprawling lean over it that looked neither safe nor inoffensive. Margie darted half-scandalized, half-admiring looks at the shapeshifter and shifted nervously in her seat.

Shiro chuckled. “ _Oojisan_ , you are too old for her.”

The old man’s grin was shameless. “A man who’s too old to look is too old to live, boy.”

Now Margie was eyeing her potential date with curiosity. “You don’t seem affected.”

“It’s a family thing,” Scott said, his shades carefully averted. “She does that. You get used to it.”

“I could get used to _that_ ,” the elder chuckled. “Can she cook?”

“I am not a _shadchan_ ,” ‘Acero’ reproved him, fixing him with a look that could have come from the old country and seemed to shut him up - a first, at least in Spiral’s opinion. “Arrange liaisons later. We have work to do. Introductions first.”

Shiro shifted his shoulders, and the temperature in the room rose a fraction. “You presume much, outsider. Perhaps I should teach her manners, _kacho_?”

Scott and the black girl tensed visibly, obviously already tight with adrenaline and ready to jump in, but Mystique only laughed - a low, throaty ripple of mirth that hung in the air and smothered the sudden spike of tension. For reasons she couldn’t possibly have explained to anyone else, it made Spiral’s skin shiver. “Stop thinking with your fucking balls, Sunfire,” she bit out without quite being able to pull herself away from the catlike, predatory confidence of those yellow eyes. “I’m Spiral, and this is my cell. These are my people. The old bastard is Cezary. The kid’s...”

“Seraph,” Margie piped up. “Call me Seraph, please, and if anyone else calls me 'kid,' I’ll consider eating you. Thanks.”

“She means it,” the old man said with paternal affection. “She’s a very stubborn girl.”

Seraph glared.

“Cyclops,” Scott put in, just in case there was actually a potential for... was it still cannibalism? A thought for another time. He tapped his glasses. “My sister’s Tempo.”

“Uh...” Seraph started, then stopped, glancing between Scott, Tempo, and the blue, scaly woman. Best not to ask.

“You should see family dinners,” the black girl - Tempo - told her with the kind of smile that wasn’t exactly friendly. “The Addams Family has nothing on us.”

“Which makes you...” Seraph eyed the stern older woman curiously, “Morticia?”

Mystique almost fell over and perforated everyone when she doubled over laughing and set the weapons rack swaying. The gray-clad woman didn’t smile, but she did hold up a hand, and the rack stopped moving as suddenly as though half a dozen men had grabbed hold of it to steady it. “Not exactly,” she murmured, the thick Bavarian accent replaced with a cool, sharp voice only tinged with the hint of German consonants, and then held up her other hand with the palm up to display the dozen metal spheres that had pooled there unnoticed. Each was scarcely a centimeter in diameter, but they glittered in the light, and when they lifted themselves and spun they seemed to flow and flatten out into glittering, razor-thin discs that gleamed dangerously before spreading themselves around her like a pack of dancing fireflies.

Tempo and Cyclops barely blinked. Mystique smiled. Spiral shivered. The other three Philadelphians stared.

Seraph broke the silence with an almost reverent murmur.  “Magneto.”

“I trust,” the woman around whom the metal glittered and spun like a lethal halo, “there will be no further need for questions.”

The old man was almost relaxed in his folding chair, though his hands toyed ceaselessly with a coin from his pocket. “They say you are a devil or a saint. They did not say you were a _zyd_.” The word had the harsh bite of a slur to it, but the bemused murmur sapped the venom from it and a small wave of the woman’s hand was enough to unclench the sudden tightness in Cyclops’s fists. It did little for the hard set of his teeth, or the icy glare in Tempo’s eyes.

“Who better than we to understand, _vater_?” Magneto’s laugh was harsh enough to strip metal, but there was a hard core of kinship in it as she held Cezary’s eyes. “The world must be made safe for all our children.”

He nodded once in agreement, chuckled. “And anyway my dear son-in-law is also a Jew, and I think you are more useful than he.”  She laughed, and the sound was warmer this time. They both turned back to the others, caught them staring, and the old man’s smile turned acerbic. “All of you gaping like fish. Disgraceful. Are we revolutionaries or are we a knitting circle, children? This woman did not come for coffee and cakes.”

“Indeed not.” Magneto gestured to Spiral, a small inclination of her hand that seemed to invite the other woman into the heart of the moment. “As your leader may have told you, there is a government facility outside your city which has been engaged in suspicious activity for some time. We are certain now that mutants are being held there and experimented on against their will. Mystique, Cyclops, Tempo and I intend to free them and burn it to ash within twenty-four hours. Your assistance - during the mission itself and later to protect the escapees - would be of great help.”

Sunfire’s eyes lit up - quite literally, in fact, as his mutant gift picked up the emotional intensity of his reaction and expressed it in dancing sparks and fireglow - and his voice was almost husky when he managed to speak. “My life is at your service, _daimyo_.”

Magneto’s lips twitched. “One hopes that will not be required, but your fervor is commendable.”

“Living to fight another day, yes?” Cezary wryly pointed out, eyes sliding once more to Mystique. “And also to...enjoy another day.”

“I am also in favor of not dying,” Seraph noted. “But if you keep that up, Grampa, I may reconsider.”

“It could be worse,” Tempo chuckled.

“Really?” There was a hint of disbelief in Seraph’s voice. “Because I don’t see how it could possibly get much...”

“It could be worse,” Cyclops affirmed in a way that suggested any further conversation was likely to lead to truths that could not be unlearned.

“So, are we now a merry band of outlaws?” Mystique questioned the room, strapping on a bandolier.  “Because I’m feeling cooped up and I really want to try out these grenades.”

Spiral stood and nodded to her people, flexing her multi-jointed shoulders and already thinking about the weapons stored in the long cabinets along the walls. “We’re in the terrorist business for real, _guerrilleros_. If you’re coming, load up.” She glanced at Magneto again, hesitated. “We aren’t exactly equipped for guests....”

“Don’t worry,” Cyclops told her as he stood up, a tight smile on his face. “We brought our own.”

“But...” Spiral started to protest, then started and almost glared at Tempo, sitting smugly with her feet propped on several large metal cases of equipment that had decidedly not been in the room a few seconds before. “Fucking hell, does she always do that?”

“Yes,” Cyclops and Magneto answered in the same half-resigned, half-amused tone.

Tempo just grinned and cocked the Colt .45 she seemed to have conjured up from thin air. “Gotta keep in practice. At least my talent doesn’t leave holes in walls when I drop my specs.”

“I’d ask if you have time to waste on hassling me,” he retorted as he started toward the boxes himself, peeling off his jacket as he went, “but I already know what you’re going to say.”

“Light-sensitive, huh?” Seraph quipped as she sat back in her chair, sharp teeth glittering in her smile. “Guess you’ve really got something interesting under there.”

“Interesting enough.” Cyclops knelt, opening a box and pulling out what looked to be a flat black helmet that caught blue highlights from the fluorescents, with a long, curved ruby slit where the eyeholes might normally have been. He brushed a finger along the slit, and he smiled, and there was nothing young or charming about it. “There are some people I’m looking forward to showing it to.”

“Amen, brother.” Tempo set the pistol down and reached for one of the boxes herself. “For the asskicking they are about to receive....”

“Enough.” Two more of the boxes had opened themselves of their own accord, spilling metal into the air in a stream of black and crimson, and Magneto turned to them - all of them - as her armor began to seal itself around her like a living thing of steel and sharp edges. “Mystique, make your phone calls. Tell them that we’ll expect them at noon.”

“Noon?” Seraph breathed, hawk’s eyes wide in surprise. “We’re doing this in the middle of the day?”

“Mostly in the morning,” Mystique answered, head and arms deep inside an ammunition crate. “This isn’t just rescue and destroy, it’s making a statement. Noon is when the sympathetic press show up and we,” she explained, straightening and loading numerous clips into her bandolier, “are at least fifteen minutes gone.”

“What kind of statement?” Spiral called across the room, checking the edge of one of her swords and using a spare hand to check the samurai-style mask Sunfire had given her when they first started working the streets together. You could never be too careful about your face when you worked where you lived.

“Fuck with mutants,” Tempo said softly, her voice deadly and earnestly quiet, “and there is nowhere you can hide, no power on Earth that can protect you. There endeth the lesson.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Springton Reservoir, PA, April 6th, 1970**

Major Stryker had begun his day with a more-or-less routine inspection schedule: read briefing files on the chauffeured trip up to the Pennsylvania facility, instruct the local director to give him a walking tour, and talk with various agents about the state of their projects. There was some promising research underway at this particular Weapon X installation, unlike some of the other locations, and Stryker congratulated the nervous-looking egghead before leaving for his lunch appointment with Senator Scott.

He hadn’t expected that by the time he got back, all hell would have broken loose, but that was the way things always happened - the problems that you expected, that you prepared for, were defused early and neatly for quick deposit in a report soon moved to the outbox. It was the ones you didn’t anticipate that blew up in your face.

Some more literally than others, of course.

Carefully parking against the road barricades set up by the Army response team, Stryker straightened his tie before exiting the vehicle. Being outside did not, unfortunately, change the scene before him. In fact, now that he could smell the smoke, it only confirmed that someone had, in fact, blown up the Springton Reservoir Weapons X facility during his off-site lunch meeting with the senior Senator from Pennsylvania.

A bit of ash drifted down and landed on the shoulder of his suit. Stryker’s jaw clenched.

The major turned and growled at the nearest soldier. “Where is your commanding officer, private?”

“Sir, I don’t know, sir.” The nineteen year old draftee was so pale that he seemed to be trying to make himself transparent, and his grip on his M-14 was white-knuckled. “My sergeant’s sifting what’s left of the guard post with one of the hazardous materials teams, sir.”

Closing his eyes for a moment and blowing out his breath in a hissing exhale, Stryker nodded once, clamping down on the horror rising in his throat. Either his people were fine or they weren’t, and the best thing he could do for them now was figure out what the hell had happened and try to prevent it from happening again.

“As you were.” The private snapped off an eager salute and moved off a few feet, leaving space for the major and his personal aide to move past the perimeter.

“I thought the poor boy was going to piss himself,” Natalia Romanova murmured as they moved through the parked jeeps and trucks and deeper into the shade of the trees that were still standing around the perimeter of what had been, a couple of hours before, a very well-concealed and expensive facility. “He did not even check my identification.”

“He’ll learn.” The Major strode forward briskly, satisfied in his expectation that the Russian would keep up despite her three-inch heels. A beautiful woman at lunch did wonders for your negotiating power. A beautiful woman with expert assassination skills meant you could wade into a war zone without stopping to change footwear.

“ _Ty che blyad_ ,” Natalia swore softly in Russian as they moved past the burnt-out shell of the guardpost and got a better look at the facility - or what had been the facility, before it was twisted into broken rubble and then melted into a glassy composite of stone, recondensed concrete and metal. “What a mess.”

Despite the thoroughness of the destruction - not a single wall was left standing - Stryker shook his head. “It’s too neat. Look at the edges - no debris outside the wreckage.  None of the trees are burned. Whoever did this didn’t use conventional explosives.”

“The building collapse is all wrong, as well. If you did it with explosives, it would have come down in sections, and the pieces would be....” Natalia gestured slowly, describing the pattern with her hands in a way that didn’t match the pool of cooling dark glass at all, then paused again and took another look around. “Do the men in the yellow hazardous materials outfits look more concerned than usual, sir? And should we therefore be moving swiftly in the other direction?”

Glancing at the hazmat team, Stryker pulled a clear plastic case out of his inner jacket pocket. The film inside was black, still shiny, and the Major nodded to himself in satisfaction. “As long as this isn’t cloudy, we’re fine. Just don’t breathe or touch any smoke.” Clipping the film to his sleeve, he proceeded.

“Excuse me!” A young man in an Army Captain’s uniform jogged up to them, trailing a couple of sergeants, a Lieutenant and a radio operator, and then came to a halt and straightened up in a way calculated to project his authority. “I’m sorry, but this is a restricted and classified area. I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave immediately, sir, until I can get clearance with the proper authorities. If you don’t comply, I’ll have you arrested.”

“Captain.” Stryker’s voice was pressurized steam ready to explode. “I’m so glad someone finally decided to investigate our presence.”  Pulling out his ID badge, he thrust it into the young man’s face. “As you can see, we are perfectly authorized to be here, not that your private at the barricade bothered to check.” The young officer’s eyes flicked down to the badge, back up to Stryker’s face, back down to the badge, and then his face went an interesting shade of pinkish white that suggested his career might be flashing before his eyes.  “What I really want to know, Captain,” he fumed, quietly at first but then building to a shout, “is why I had to walk onto ground zero to learn that someone blew up my facility!”

“Major Stryker, sir!” The captain’s spine snapped as rigidly taut as it ever had on the parade ground at West Point, and to his credit he managed to speak clearly and crisply in spite of the obvious temptation to blurt information out as fast as possible. “We were not aware that you’d been on base, sir, and the emergency procedure orders dictated that you were to be notified as quickly as securely possible. A secure call was placed to your office in Washington from our HQ within ten minutes of our arrival, sir!”

A vein started throbbing in Stryker’s left temple. “My office. In Washington.”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

“Don’t you ‘sir’ me! I have a radio in my car, so my driver can alert me in case of an emergency. Does this, or does this not, Captain, qualify as an emergency?”

The Captain’s face paled a little more, but he didn’t fold. Good steel in the boy’s spine, at least. He nodded, rather than risk tripping over his own tongue, then cleared his throat and tried again. “I received the emergency procedure briefing on the road, sir, but I am quite certain that no direct contact between the response team and your office was indicated. I’m afraid you’re going to have to take what was done with my reports up with Colonel Trimble at Regimental HQ. In the meantime, I really would recommend clearing the site, sir. The hazmat teams are picking up traces of alpha, gamma and x-ray radiation from the burn site, and there are obvious concerns about containment if radioactive materials are still stored under that melt. Sir.”

Sparing the boy a moment of his ire, Stryker glanced at his radiation detector again - the bottom inch was developing a faint cloudiness to its surface. “We didn’t have any radioactive materials on-site this morning.” He shared a look with Agent Romanoff.

“Do we have any nuclear-capable hostiles on file?”

“None on file, sir.” Natalia smiled, a tight movement of the lips that was as beautiful as it was dangerous and shifted most of the Captain’s party back a step or two in surprise. “A new entry, apparently. Impressive. He would have had to raise the temperature of the area to nearly 1600 degrees - excuse me, 3,000 degrees in your Fahrenheit scale - to slag the structural steel and vaporize the concrete of the structure, but the glassing of the soil suggests a temperature closer to 5,000 Fahrenheit. At that point, the steel would have vaporized and recondensed in places where the temperature rose an additional four to five hundred degrees and the bulk of the chemical components of the concrete would have been rendered into burning gas. I would strongly suggest not cracking the upper layers of that glass shell for some time, sir - the interior will still be liquid, and hot enough to melt most metal tools.”

“That’s impossible.” The Captain stared at her, gaping in disbelief but still rallying his professional education to defend some sense of the world as he understood it. “Any blast that could generate that kind of temperature would have set trees and houses on fire for miles, leveled buildings, thrown up a goddamn mushroom cloud....”

“Not a detonation,” Natalia murmured softly, fingertips tracing the curve of the layer of glass that stopped a few inches from her feet. “A contained incineration - like a nuclear furnace.”

“But nothing the Russians have could...”

Stryker silenced the Captain with a piercing look. “That’s classified, soldier.” He surveyed the destruction once more, noting teams of response workers at various places around the edges of the slag heap.

Wiping the sharpness from his features with an unsteady hand, he asked the question he’d been dreading the answer to since he stopped at the barricade.

“Survivors?”

The Captain’s expression turned grim, though there was a hint of sympathy in his eyes. “None from inside the building, sir. A few of the perimeter guards were still alive when we found them, but their statements were... incoherent. One of them swore he was attacked by a bipedal crocodile, another one claimed that a gryphon swooped down out of the sky and mauled him, and a third claimed that a woman in body armor just _appeared_ next to his buddy, the unit grease-man, and blew his head off with a 1911 Colt. Obviously, I was going to wait until they settled down some before taking the statements for my final report.”

“Christ.” One hundred fifty agents, guards and other employees had staffed the facility, and now most of them were buried under its smouldering remains. Come dinner time he’d be personally calling the families of the top officers to inform them of their losses. “Jesus Christ.”

“Somehow I do not think he had anything to do with this,” Natalia murmured.

With a snort of agreement, Stryker glanced back at the Captain again. “I suppose the APCs are under there, as well.”

The Captain cleared his throat and managed a smile of gallows humor. “Actually, sir, that’s something else you should probably see. If you’ll follow me?”

It was a relatively brief walk around the massive heap of slag and glass that was all that remained of most of the base, but toward the rear of the facility there were still shattered walls and twisted structural supports standing. Many of them looked to have been bent or sheared off by some enormous hand, thrown about like so many matchsticks, but it was the trail of debris leading to the old mine shaft that was most dramatic - it was as if the whole back quarter of the facility had been lifted and crammed into the throat of the shaft like a giant stopper. Men moved over the wreckage, digging at it and pulling chunks of broken concrete and metal away, trying to clear the way into the shaft itself in the probably vain hope of finding someone alive inside. To each side of that unnerving display were the broken ruins of vehicles - four M113 ACAVs, armored personnel carriers mounting three Browning machine guns each, the heavy punch of the guard detachment. They had not been easy to divert to this duty, but Stryker had been certain that the guards might need the firepower in case of mutant attack.

They had not, from the look of things, lasted long. One was crushed like a tin can or some mad giant child’s discarded toy, another ripped cleanly in half along its weld lines, a third with a massive hole punched cleanly through the front and rear of the vehicle. The fourth, whose damage was at least recognizable, seemed to have been torn apart by an internal grenade detonation and then flipped over as though it weighed a few dozen pounds instead of twelve tons.

The Captain, who was already demonstrating that he could learn more than one thing in a day, said nothing and moved off to speak with his radio operator at a respectful distance.

The stony set of the Major’s face seemed to grow craggier with each new sight. He gestured at the wreckage, murmuring to Natalia in a voice like gravel in a concrete mixer.

“Our old friend at work, would you say?”

Romanoff grudgingly nodded. “There are others with similar capabilities, but none are active.” Her voice turned grimly amused, a classical Russian response to unpleasant prospects. “That won’t have gone well for your pet project. Do you suppose we’re going to find a pool of that remarkable metal at the bottom of that pile of glass?”

Grimacing at the possibilities, Stryker shook his head. “It can’t be melted down again once it’s solid, not at the temperatures you mentioned. We tested a sample of it in the center of a thermonuclear warhead - it came through unscratched.”

“Inconvenient,” Romanoff retorted dryly. “I suppose that you will have to keep it in the mess as a curio.”

Before the look of surprised disgust on his face could shift to anger, Stryker was interrupted by a call from the Captain, who seemed to have regained his composure after a few minutes with his subordinates. “Major, sir, we may have found something of interest. I’m having them brought to my command post now.”

“Finally.” The Major stalked off in the indicated direction, trailing the Captain. Natalia shrugged, brushed a bit of ash from her black dress, and jogged along behind. They arrived to find four soldiers training their weapons on two people seated on a log. As they approached, Stryker got a closer look and glared.

They were journalists.

“Look, all I want to know is whether you’re going to shoot me if I take out my lighter and light this cigarette. Yes, no, maybe, can’t tell me because it’s classified?” The tall, lanky man perched on the edge of the log ran a hand through his thinning brown hair and waved an unlit cigarette with the other. “Tell me you fascist jackboots speak English. This is America, isn’t it? I haven’t somehow stumbled behind the Iron Curtain by fucking mistake?”

His companion, a wiry hispanic woman with a decidedly unfeminine lack of makeup to match the bob haircut, leather bomber jacket and trousers she was wearing, rolled her eyes and fiddled idly with one of the three cameras hanging from straps across her shoulders. One of the soldiers shifted his gun, and her hands came away from the camera, displaying the lined, empty palms for his inspection.

In no mood to cater to prisoners, Stryker nodded to the Captain. “Take his lighter.”

Arms still in the air, the man fixed a vitriolic stare at the Major as a soldier patted him down for his Zippo. “Ok, Bad Fed. I get it, you’re in control, I depend on you, yaddah yah.”  His eyes jumped over to Natalia, busy examining the contents of their wallets, and widened a bit.  “Yowza. Can she be the Good Fed? Please?”

“You are not amusing,” Natalia snapped, walking close enough to lean forward and give the man a hard look in the eyes. “I wonder if you will try to be so funny if I break your fingers, yes?”

The man didn’t flinch, but a hard swallow belied his calm. “So. How can I help you?”

“Manners. Better.” Natalia took a step back and glanced at her boss, got a small nod in return, continued. “You will explain your involvement with the mutant terrorist Magneto. You will also explain your role in the attack on the civilian research station here at the Reservoir.”

The camerawoman snorted in disbelief. “Research station. Right. _Qué mierda._ Was that what all that smoke and noise was?”

Natalia turned and gave the woman a savage look, which was returned with cold contempt. The Russian flicked a glance at her boss, flexing her hands in a way that cracked her knuckles audibly. _Hard case,_ that look said.

A faint sheen of sweat had appeared on the man’s brow. He shared a glance with his companion. “We aren’t involved with any kind of terrorists, Ma’am. We just got an anonymous tip that there was going to be a story out here.”

Stryker watched the pair closely. The sweat could be a sign that the journalist was lying, or it could be a sign that he understood the depths of shit he was in. “Assuming I believe you--which is a big assumption at this point--you’re still on the hook for trespassing and threatening national security.”  He gestured at the woman’s cameras. “You’ll be surrendering those.”

“Fuck if I will,” she objected vehemently. “They’re fucking expensive, _hijo de puta_. You want my film, fine, fuck it, but you’re not taking my cameras. I’ll bust your girlfriend’s pretty nose first.”

Natalia had her hand around the woman’s throat before anyone could react, and the Russian’s voice was icy razors against the photographer’s ear. “We have a professional relationship, Miss Reyes. Become confused on that point again, and I will be forced to remind you in a permanent and painful way.”

“In that case,” Susana Reyes gasped out, throat working against the slender steel of Natalia’s fingers, “can I get your fucking phone number?”

“ _Cuchka derganaya!_ ” Natalia snapped back three steps, shaking her hand as if burned, a look of such violent disgust on her face that it was probably a good thing for Stryker’s chances of avoiding the need to requisition two discreet body disposals that she wasn’t carrying a gun.

A look of mingled concern and anger painted the man’s face. “Jesus, Sue, now?” She grinned back at him in defiance, rubbing her throat silently but apparently unhurt. He sighed.

“Okay, so, please, take her film, take my notebook, anything but the cameras and my gin. Please.”  His eyes darted between Romanoff and Stryker. “I’m Thomas J. Walker, investigative journalist for the _Times_. The crazy woman is my photographer, and her cover snaps are usually good enough to be worth the pain in my ass. Mister Rosenthal knows we’re out here and is going to be really pissed if I don’t call in by tomorrow afternoon, so can we all cool the fuck down and not do anything else stupid?”  He took in Stryker’s stony glare. “Sir?”

The Major pursed his lips, weighing the variables, then offered the writer one of his politely charming smiles. “Purely a misunderstanding, I’m sure. If you’ll cooperate fully, I’m sure we can have you out of here by the end of the day.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned away and gestured for the Captain and his bodyguard to follow him.

“Captain. Get me a polygraph however you can - I want it here in under an hour.”  As the young man snapped off a salute and headed for his radioman, Stryker took Natalia a few steps aside. “Find out as much as you can about those two,” he murmured. “Look for any mutant-related activity.”

“Sir,” Natalia acknowledged, her eyes still dark with hatred and fixed on the woman seated at the end of the log. “I could still persuade them to talk.”

“Agent, I understand you had an upsetting experience,” the Major said dryly, “but in this country, dead, missing or tortured journalists pose a much bigger problem for people like us.” He rolled his shoulders. “They’re scared, we’ll soon know more about them than their own mothers, and I don’t need more trouble from the Pentagon than I am already going to have. Is that clear?”

“ _Da_. Very clear.” Natalia spat, then straightened up. “But if the situation ever changes....”

“You’ll be the first to know,” he told her, ignoring the cool chill of discomfort at what turning the woman the Soviets had called the Black Widow loose on two civilians might entail. Still, it might become necessary. He’d think on it.

The Captain was coming back again, probably with more bad news. Stryker decided in the privacy of his own mind that if it really was another setback the young man had to report, he’d see the lad shipped to a tracking station somewhere cold and unpleasant. Iceland, perhaps.

“Major, sir,” the Captain began, obviously well aware he was taking his life in his hands, “there’s been another development. We... we have a survivor, sir. She claims to know you.”

Blinking away the latest surprise of the day, Stryker allowed himself a smile. “Lean woman, Asiatic, doesn’t speak much?”

“Y... yes, sir. She seems to have... well, she seems to have dug herself out of the mine with her bare hands, sir.” The Captain swallowed. “How did you know?”

“She’s one of ours,” he answered vaguely, feeling far more relaxed than he had since the first sign of smoke from the highway. _Good news at last. She should be able to give us descriptions of the attackers, as well._

Natalia snorted softly, eyes still dark and angry, and took Walker’s lighter from the Captain to light one of her own cigarettes. “More or less. I suppose we will not put her in the mess after all.”

Stryker laughed aloud, allowing himself to be amused by the dark humor of it at last, and the young army officer standing beside them swallowed and visibly decided that it would be better for his health, career and possibly sanity if he didn’t ask.


	8. Chapter 8

**Westchester, NY, April 8th, 1970**

Of all the wonders of technology on the grounds of the Xavier Mansion - and there were quite a number - Erika Lehnsherr Xavier was perhaps least fond of the underground room just down the hall from the armory. It had taken no end of time, effort and money to build, including a great deal of her own technical skill and particular powers, but that didn’t mean that she had to like it. It was an opinion that seemed generally shared around the house - Scott, who’d helped her do much of the math for it, called it the Black Hole. Hank McCoy, who’d done much of the basic research and design, called it some impossible acronym designed to bury the real function as far from the surface as possible. Jean called it Time Out.

Erika and Charles, when they referred to it at all, simply called it the Box.

The outside of the door was a dull, grey metal, distinctive from the other doors in the passage. In addition to how little light it reflected, it was nearly featureless with only a keypad built into the wall beside it and hinges on the outside.

The image of that door was the last thought Charles had projected to her before he abruptly severed their connection.

That had been last night, while she and Scott and Heather were still in Philadelphia ensuring that the mutants they’d rescued - eight in all, three men and four women and a boy of sixteen, leaving four disappearances unaccounted for - received proper medical attention and living spaces secure enough to hide them from whatever government agency might come looking at them. He’d thundered in her head like the voice of God, demanding to know where she was and what had happened, and she’d allowed her temper to get the better of her. She still would have prefered to have whatever argument they might be having in person, of course, but it had perhaps not been necessary to be quite so direct in telling her husband so.

Which left the Box.

The interior - ceramic tile floor, bare aluminium walls, sharp fluorescent lights - had not been calculated to be cheerful. However, since only three people in the household had ever used the room, it hadn’t stopped Charles or the Greys from trying: plush, Turkish throw rugs softened the floor and complimented the dignified upholstery of the antique sofa and armchairs, none of which matched the row of bunks along the back and side walls, which to be fair couldn’t seem to agree on what color or design their sheets ought to be. The back and right wall, as well as a quarter of the ceiling, were painted a flat, non-reflective black; the left wall was a substantial mural of a broad-branched oak tree, the paint not quite properly set on the aluminum, the blue sky and wispy clouds that trailed up across the ceiling petering out before they quite reached the light fixtures. A weight rack had been shoved in just past the sofa, though at least a quarter of the dumbbells appeared to have wandered off by now.

A child’s drawing of a tiger, the edges of the paper curling with age, was hung on the wall above one of the armchairs with a refrigerator magnet.

Charles was sitting in that chair, his attention apparently on a book open in his lap, when Erika opened the door with a touch of her mind. She stepped all the way through and locked them both in.

The book closed with a snap. He turned it over in his hands, thumb running over the spine, eyes fixed on the cover.

“ _Guten morgen, mein Mann._ ” Erika smiled faintly, studying him as she dropped an ironic curtsy to make light of the reverential affection in her voice. Seven years had drawn lines of worry and joy alike around his eyes, still a perfect blue, and regular runs across the grounds kept his frame as lithe and trim as ever in spite of his periodic bouts of over-concern with his diet. His thinning hair was carefully arranged to its best advantage, another subtle sign of the vanity she’d found irritating when she met him and now found strangely comforting. It was difficult to be too intimidated by the god-like powers of one’s husband, after all, when you were perfectly aware that he kept a bottle of hair dye in the bathroom drawer ‘just in case.’

Jaw set, he placed the book carefully on a side table. When he finally raised his eyes to hers, she felt the weight of his carefully-controlled anger crash against her, force the air out of her, pulse raw adrenaline into her blood. Experience centered her body, braced her against the sudden weakness of her knees, forced her lungs to remember that there was no reason not to take one steady breath after another, slowed her heart rate.

They looked at each other, trembling together.

“‘Educational field trip,’ Erika?” he demanded, voice shaky, “How could--”  he stopped, waited, surged to his feet and walked to the far side of the room, hands making sharp, aborted gestures in the air. Whirling again to face her, the lines of his posture and expression hardened. “Explain yourself.”

“I thought it would be best to discuss this after our excursion, rather than before. It would have been disruptive to Scott and Heather’s focus if they had been aware we were conducting one of our arguments during the trip.” Smoothly and gracefully as the pressure of his mind in the room allowed, she crossed to the sofa and seated herself with an almost delicate flick of her skirt. Seven years ago, she would have stalked to the chair and snapped at him. If life in Westchester had not precisely softened her, it had taught her that there were other ways to meet the world than teeth bared. “I did not expect that it would break in the newspapers before I had the opportunity to tell you in person.”

“You should have,” he snapped back, hand flung towards her in accusation. “We’ve been reading about Magneto long enough to know how fast the news cycle moves.” His voice started to break out of its normal range, louder and more varied in pitch. “Was is just me you were willfully ignoring, or the consequences in general?”

“I think I have a very clear idea of the consequences, Charles.” She kept her voice quiet and reasonable by an effort of will, though her hand clenched against the arm of the couch sharply enough to turn her knuckles white. “Eight mutants who could expect nothing better than imprisonment and were likely to be tortured or killed are now free, and a message has been sent to the American government making clear that there will be consequences - practical and political - to giving support to butchers, torturers and oppressors who wish to prey on our people.”

The pressure in the room rising, Charles dragged both hands through his hair, a once-common habit that he now only exhibited under extreme stress. “God, Erika, yes, of course it was a strategic move, of course I’m glad the prisoners are free. I mean the consequences for the children.” Arms open wide, he flung his question at her as if it were a bloody weapon he’d found in her closet. “What could have possessed you to involve them?”

“They asked me to, Charles.” She lowered her voice further, almost to a murmur, though the emerald gleam of her eyes burned through the dull brown and amber like twin points of witchfire. “Quite emphatically. They asked me to train them, and to teach them, because they wanted to stand up and do their duty to their people. They were fully aware of the consequences that could be involved when they did so - not least because I explained them in detail - and I will not apologize for choosing to help them do so.”

“Of course not. Whatever could you have to apologize for?” Charles muttered sarcastically as he shook his head. Then he pulled up short in stung half-belief. “You’ve been giving the children paramilitary training for two and a half months. In preparation for missions. Without telling me.”  

Erika opened her mouth to reply, then paused. Flushed. Opened her mouth again. Closed it. _That sounds a great deal more ominous out loud than it ever did in my head, husband,_ she projected carefully and distinctly so that he could taste the layer of chagrin behind the thought.

His rage choked them both for a heartbeat, then two, and then a sliver of an involuntary smile cracked his glare, and then he was laughing doubled over and the pressure in the room broke like the cleansing rain of a storm finally spending itself after holding back too long. She smiled herself, then giggled - a girlish sound she entirely hated - and then couldn’t help but laugh at her own discomfort.

Their mirth rolled back and forth from the metal walls of the room, and when they finally washed up on the other side of the flood they were panting and flushed with the exertion of it all.

 _Sometimes, the thing I hate about you most is how you derail our arguments_ , her husband wryly projected. _You and your absurd personal standards._

“I cannot believe,” she managed to gasp out between unsteady breaths, “that I somehow convinced myself that it was all merely theoretical right up until the moment that we were sure about the facility in Philadelphia. I cannot possibly have been this skilled at self-deception before your influence set in, Charles.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Yes, because you enjoyed every minute of your solitude before.”

“Of course I enjoyed it,” she said without missing a beat, though she could not quite kill the smile on her lips. “I wasn’t afflicted by the well-meaning, pleasant and exceedingly attractive distraction of a husband, or the endlessly charming and exasperating woes of a house full of children. How could I not have been perfectly content? What ever was I thinking in leaving Oxford?”

Charles gave her a crooked smile as he flopped into the chair next to the sofa on which she was still slumped in the aftermath of her laughing fit. He began smoothing stray hairs from her face, and this close she could see the weariness of his sleepless night.

“I’m still quite angry with you,” he murmured, fingers feather-light on her temples.

“Understandably. I have been a bit of a high-handed fool, haven’t I?” She looked up at him, still smiling faintly as she leaned into his hands, feeling half her age and newly married. She so often did when he touched her so gently, and it sometimes boiled her blood how domestic and pliant his affection could make her, but at this moment she was willing to welcome it without question. “I should have told you what I was doing and endured the argument at once, when Scott and Heather approached me. You deserved the chance to see their conviction just as much as I did. I should not have allowed our discomfort with discussing my … work to interfere.”

“Indeed.” His warm hand settling on her shoulder, he sighed. “I wish...”

“Someday,” she murmured softly - not believing it, but allowing them both the luxury of pretending that she did. “I have actually begun to develop a fondness for gardening.”

He chuckled and brushed his fingertips fondly along her jaw. “I know. I especially enjoyed how offended you were at the development.”

“I told you that you make me domestic.” She turned and caught his fingertips gently with her lips, kissing her way up to his palm, and then smiled up at him more wryly. “It is somewhat inconvenient after a lifetime of disdain for the _hausfrauen_ of the world to discover that I am not immune to the allure of hearth and home.”

“Terrible, I’m sure,” he answered, darkening eyes locked on her mouth. “Though I understand that some of Jean’s clothes need alterations, if you feel the need to indulge....”

“Charles Francis Xavier,” Erika growled softly as she leaned up to grab him by the back of the neck and pull him down to her, “I do not _sew_.”

Charles didn’t answer aloud, being rather too busy with climbing onto the couch while kissing his wife. Fortunately, as a telepath, he had other options. _Yet._

 _Some day,_ she told him silently without breaking the kiss, _I will find a way to shut you up that does not require my mouth below your belt._

 _Later._ It could have been his thought, or hers, but the decision was - for once - entirely mutual.


	9. Chapter 9

**Westchester, NY, April 8th, 1970**

In retrospect, Charles was forced to admit that the school’s low-domed, softly lit library might not have been the ideal setting for a conversation with Scott and Heather about their futures and the practical implications of their choices. It was a crowded room now, for one thing, with newly assembled metal and cheap wood shelves mixed in among the towering old oak rows which had been his refuge so often as a child. The array of throw pillows, many of them in psychedelic colors, half-finished puzzles and stereo equipment contributed their own _lèse-majesté_ to the grand old room, which turned the fine silver teaset on the small table - between the four armchairs into which Erika, Heather, Scott and he himself had settled -  from an elegant accoutrement into something a bit anachronistic and tragicomic.

It did not help much that it would occur to him - after the tea had been poured and everyone settled - that he might have chosen this place for this particular conversation because it had been his mother’s usual room for scolding him.

Heather, of course, didn’t fail to contribute her own pinprick needling to his rapidly deflating sense of gravity. “‘The players are assembled and all is revealed.’ Are we going to sit here and milk the dramatic tension, or are we going to talk?”

Erika, mercifully, only arched an eyebrow. Unfortunately, tightly shielded as he was, Charles could still hear the warm inner brightness of her laughter.

It didn’t help. _Stop that,_ he thought at his wife in exasperation that didn’t sound nearly as dignified as he’d have liked.

 _It was your idea, my dear husband, to give her the complete works of Agatha Christie in the first place._ Erika folded her hands more firmly in her lap and kept her face composed, but her eyes danced with amusement.

Charles took a steadying sip of Earl Grey. That did help, and he cleared his throat.

“All three of you have let me down,” he began quietly, looking each in the eye. “It’s not just how worried I was for your safety, or how angry I am that you kept this from me, or even my concern for how this will affect the world’s perception of mutants.” The teacup clinked against the saucer softly, but the sound seemed to fill the room. “The worst of it is that you may be throwing your lives away, and even if you don’t--” his voice broke on the next words-- “get killed, you could be caught. Captured by those you fight or simply exposed. You’d be living as fugitives. Even if you’re willing to die for this cause, are you willing to sacrifice everything else?”

There was the subtle flicker of a look between Heather and Scott - though it was hard to read Scott’s face behind the mirrored ruby of his sunglasses - and it was Heather who spoke first. “Somebody has to. We have the power, we have the brains, we have the right teacher. I want a lot of things for my life, Mister Xavier, but I’m not going to have any of them at the price of people like me going through what I went through. What Scott and I both went through. The government, the people who hate us - they all need to learn that if they start a fight with us, we’ll finish it.”

As Charles studied her face, a sad smile tugged at his lips. “You know, Heather, I never expected to be proud of someone and terrified for the same reason. You three,” he included Scott and lingered a bit on Erika in his glance around the room, “are going to be the death of me.”

“We’ll try not to be, Mister Xavier.” If Heather’s voice had been all strident determination, Scott’s was rueful compassion, but it wasn’t any more yielding. “But ‘I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.’ Heather’s right - it needs doing, and someone else might screw it up.”

Erika’s mouth twitched at the corners, and she arched an eyebrow at the young man who had become as close to her as any son of her own blood could have been. “Since when,” she inquired gently, “have you been reading John Adams often enough to quote him so fluently?”

“Since about the time we decided to take up arms against an unjust government, _meine mutter_. It seemed about right.”

“And you wanted to have the right thing to say to Charles, without worrying about tripping over your own choice of words?”

“That, too.” Scott shrugged, a comfortable gesture he would not have been able to carry off so effectively three years before. University had been good for him - his confidence and his sense of his own moral center both - and Erika’s pride was so bright and sharp for a moment that Charles could feel that it stole her voice from her.

“If I quote Nietzsche, can I go next time too?”

Teacup halfway to his mouth, Charles jumped, consequently splashing the coffee table, tea service and himself with the entire contents. Dripping and furious, he glared at the interloper.

“I see you’ve been working on your shields,” he remarked coldly. “And no, you may decidedly _not_.”

Jean Gray - her body, at least, though the set of her shoulders and the sharpness of her smile suggested that it might be her other half talking - stood at the corner of one of the rows of shelves, the white blouse and plain gray jacket of her day-to-day class ‘uniform’ a bit rumpled and her red hair loose around her shoulders. It should not have been possible for a girl of fifteen to look so calm, so sure of herself or so absolutely unabashed at interrupting a conversation to which she had decidedly not been invited.

The embarrassed cough-and-shuffle routine of John Proudstar was far more age-appropriate, and the boy’s appearance behind Phoenix and likewise-unkempt state of dress actually had a mollifying effect on Charles. He sighed. “Well, I suppose you at least didn’t seek us out.”  

“Would have, if I’d known about it.” Proudstar’s smile was boyish, but there was a glint of eagerness in his eyes that it was hard to dismiss. “Kicking the Seventh Cavalry in the teeth sounds about right to me.  Where do I sign up?”

“You may begin training exercises with Scott and Heather next Tuesday, John. When they are satisfied with your progress, we will discuss the possibilities.” Erika’s smile was just a touch too mild, and when Charles caught the slight tightening of Scott’s jaw out of the corner of his eye and tasted the tight tangle of the older boy’s emotions, he bit down his instinctive burst of protest and took a moment to consider while he applied his handkerchief to doing what could be done for his suit. Whatever the reasons for Scott’s unhappiness with John Proudstar - and he very much prefered not to think too deeply about them - it was clear that the young man would not have an easy time of it in training. The boy liked a challenge, true enough, but letting him work the idea out of his system would be more effective than any amount of forbidding him could be.

That, or it would make him all the more eager to become involved in Erika’s crusade. Perhaps Charles should resign himself to holding nothing more than advisory powers over his own household.

Phoenix’s face flushed with the anger which, now that she was no longer shielding herself so tightly, filled the room like a hot wind. “Why does _he_ get to start training and _I_ get a hard-and-fast no from the Wizard of Oz? I swear, Doctor Lehnsherr, if this is because I’m a girl and he’s not....”

“It is because John Proudstar is unlikely to level a large building or mindwipe a small town if he loses control of his powers in the field, _mein schatz_.” There was tenderness in the way Erika voice the rebuke, but also an iron firmness. “You must feel that I approve of your desire to help, but it is not a risk that you can take without careful consideration.”

Phoenix opened her mouth, then froze, her glare flattened into a thousand-yard stare. Blinking her attention back into the room, the girl shifted, her posture flowing from aggressive into hopeful. “Mister Xavier,” Jean said in a gentle, imploring voice, “We both want to help, and Professor Lehnsherr’s right--we need more training before we can do that.” As relatively quiet and calm as she was, a fierce energy still animated Jean, a fact belied by a bitten lip and wide, expectant eyes. “Will you train us? Please?”

Glaring at the puddle on the coffee table to avoid the girl’s heart-melting stare, Charles considered. If Jean and Phoenix hadn’t agreed, he would have dismissed the request out of hand, but those two so rarely saw eye-to-eye on anything that he felt obligated to pay attention. And perhaps Jean would be a moderating influence on her other side.

The puddle was unmoved by his handkerchief, and the suit was probably done for. He sighed.

“We must proceed cautiously,” he began sternly. “and take whatever precautions need to be taken. We’ll probably spend a good deal of time in the Box.” He did not add the same speech that he had given to Jean when she first arrived at the mansion-- _If I have any reason to believe that you are a danger to yourself or others, you will stay in Time Out until you are no longer a threat._ Both she and Phoenix were well aware of this reality, and of the never-spoken, final implications: _For as long as necessary._

Jean beamed. “Thank you, Mister Xavier! We’ll follow the rules, I promise.” An odd, twitching shiver ran through the girl, and her joy shifted into a placated, if somewhat annoyed haughtiness. “Fine, me too. I’ll be good.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Erika murmured with a carefully suppressed smile, “but your best efforts will be appreciated.”

Heather didn’t even try to suppress her own excitement. “You’re both going to need new names,” she informed John and the Greys, “and wait until you see the armor.”

Charles did his best not to sigh, but John’s grin made that exceedingly difficult. “Sounds cool,” the young Apache almost crowed with delight. “Does this team have a name?”

“It isn’t a band, John,” Scott retorted with visible irritation. “We’re not going to be handing out leaflets or putting up posters.”

Phoenix gave Scott a withering look and wrapped her arm around John’s. “That doesn’t mean it doesn’t need a name. Something cool.”

“The X-Men? You know, after the Professor and Mister Xavier?” John blinked as everyone in the room turned and glared at him, very nearly in unison. “What did I say?’

 _Magneto and the X-men._ Erika’s voice laughed in Charles’s head as Scott and Heather both began berating John for the whole idea of putting an obvious reference to their teachers into what was supposed to be the name for a secret team. _It does sound rather like one of the bands whose records Phoenix is always buying, does it not?_

 _Well, ‘X’ does represent the unknown in many fields,_ Charles countered. _The precise genetic configuration that produces mutant powers has been described as ‘the X factor’ in journal publications for some years now._

 _Purely because of its symbolic meaning, of course,_ Erika retorted dryly, _and not because of the name of the man who first theorized it._

A pulse of half-preening amusement flowed through their connection. _Of course._

_There is the additional difficulty, you realize, that well over half of our ‘X-men’ are going to be women, Charles. Mystique will be beside herself if I let that pass._

He couldn’t keep a certain ironic bite out of his mental voice. _Does she need reasons to be beside herself, any longer? I thought she was simply in the habit._

Erika laughed quietly, bringing her fingertips to her heart to signal that he’d scored a point, and their children continued a lively debate on what precisely to call their new paramilitary organization without them as they shared a long, lingering smile not entirely free from sadness.

 _Here endeth the lesson,_ Erika thought/remembered, and Charles decided not to ask just yet. It would be important to know, later, but they’d done enough for one day. Being a revolutionary, after all, was like gardening - an acquired talent that needed patience.

Tomorrow would be soon enough.


End file.
